News Microbes

What makes chocolate taste so good? It’s the microbes

Wild microbes shape chocolate’s flavor during cocoa fermentation

Three cocoa pods. The first has a ripe orange yellow pod. The top third has been cut and sits like a cap on top of white pulp that surrounds the unfermented beans inside. The second green pod in the middle has been split lengthwise displaying white pulp-shrouded beans before yeast and bacteria ferment the beans to produce fine chocolate flavors. The third appears to be the empty half of the second pod filled with shiny, dark squares of chocolate.

Chocolate’s flavor comes not just from the plant, but from yeast and bacterial fermentation that converts sugars and other molecules in the beans and pulp (white surrounding beans inside the pod, middle and left) into fine flavors.

Mimi Chu Leung

By Tina Hesman Saey

Like wine and cheese, chocolate has terroir,