Melts in your mouth, but not in your car: the ongoing scientific quest to create heat-resistant chocolate

By Ana Isabel Terraes Huerta, Técnico medio de investigación de la Facultad de Química de Valencia, Universitat de València
Eva Soriano Vega, Técnica Investigación (Servei Central de Suport a la Investigació Experimental-SCSIE), Universitat de València

There are few pleasures greater than letting a piece of chocolate melt slowly on your tongue. Indeed, the proximity of chocolate’s melting point to our own body temperature is one of the reasons it is so widely appreciated.

But this quality also makes it go soft and lose shape when temperatures rise, making it hard to store and transport in warm climates. To overcome this limitation, the food industry has developed several ways to make heat-resistant chocolate.

But to understand how this works, we must first learn how chocolate is made – particularly the role that cocoa…

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