A Match Made in Heaven: Why Coffee and Chocolate Pair So Well With Each Other
This is a collaborative post.
Coffee and chocolate go together like peas and carrots or wine and cheese. The rich flavours of the pair taste good together because they both come from tropical plants and have a similar processing system.
Coffee and chocolate blends
If you’ve ever ordered anything with a mocha flavour, you’ve tasted coffee and chocolate together. Coffee producers often add chocolate to their medium-roast coffee beans or grounds to get the rich mocha flavour that sweetens the bitterness of coffee. You can also add mocha flavouring to any coffee for a great-tasting beverage.
Where coffee and chocolate come from
Chocolate and coffee come from different species of tropical plants. Coffee beans are red berries easily spotted on the plant, while chocolate comes from cacao beans buried in the pods of the cacao fruit. Coffee is native to Africa, but farmers commonly grow both in South America.
Similar flavour profiles
Chocolate and coffee have naturally bitter flavours. Coffee drinkers add their favourite amount of sugar and cream to coffee to cut the bitterness, and chocolatiers do the same thing to make various types of chocolate.
One hundred per cent dark chocolate contains no sugar or milk, while milk chocolate gets its sweetness from a lovely blend of milk and sugar.
Coffee beans give the beverage a unique flavour. Some describe their dark coffees as having bitter, floral, or rich flavours, and the same can be said about dark chocolate.
If you enjoy a particular type of coffee, you will typically enjoy the same type of chocolate.
How producers make coffee
Manufacturers use similar processes to turn coffee beans and cacao seeds. Once they’ve harvested the seeds, they ferment them. Manufacturers remove the outer layer of the seed to remove the water. When the process is completed, they roast the green coffee beans.
During the fermentation step, the beans gain their flavour. Manufacturers use wet, dry, or semi-dry fermentation to bring out a specific flavour in the beans. After the beans dry, they go through a handful of steps before coffee manufacturers can roast them.
During the roasting process, they need to reach an internal temperature of 400 degrees Fahrenheit to get the flavoured coffee drinkers to enjoy.
How producers make chocolate
Before fermenting cacao beans, manufacturers remove the seeds. They place the seeds in earthen pits or wooden bins to ferment. The container affects the flavour, and manufacturers use specialised containers for each type of seed. They must also be dried and roasted before making them into consumable variations.
When the processes are completed, both have a variety of flavours and aromatic compounds. They also contain several health benefits from flavonoids like magnesium and catechins.
Wrap up
Coffee and chocolate pair well together because they share similar growing regions near the equator. Manufacturers use similar processing methods to pull the various flavour profiles from the fermented beans and seeds.
When choosing a coffee and chocolate pairing, you can select similar flavours like dark chocolate with black coffee or pick a sumptuous milk chocolate to help sweeten your bitter coffee drink.
