• Where is Your Chocolate From? — Chromatography Traces Its Origins

GC-MS

Where is Your Chocolate From? — Chromatography Traces Its Origins

Sep 18 2017

Knowing exactly what you are eating and drinking seems to be of increasing importance as people switch from mass-produced produce to ‘designer’ brands. Organic fruit, vegetable and meat sales have all increased in recent years. Single-origin coffees are on the lips of all coffee drinkers searching for the best brew possible. Even craft beers from microbreweries are to be found on the cobbles of Coronation Street.

The latest foodstuff to join in is chocolate. A walk down the confectionary aisle in your upmarket supermarket will reveal chocolates made from beans from one specific country — even in some cases from a specific estate or plantation. These products are sold for a premium, hence, the importance for knowing that what’s on the wrapper is what’s on the inside.

Single origin — Always better?

The flavour profile of chocolate — just like coffee or wine — can be complex. This is due to the many different chemicals that can react with the taste and odour receptors in your mouth and nose. There are so many things that go into making the chocolate taste the way it does. The starting point is the beans — and the beans flavour profile — and that is before the expert chocolatier gets their hands on the beans.

There are many variables that affect the flavour profile of the beans — but perhaps the main variable is geographic location as this ultimately affects the other variables. It is geographical location that affects soil, climate and exposure, all variables that affect the taste of cocoa beans and coffee beans — another product sold with a single origin premium.

But post-production also has an impact on the taste and quality of the finished product. And as with coffee beans, the type of drying, washing and roasting has an impact on the flavour of the chocolate beans —and that is before the chocolatier uses his expertise in creating a chocolate masterpiece.

Where is your chocolate from?

A recent paper in Food Analytical Methods has used chromatography to analyse the chemical composition of cocoa beans to help determine their geographical origin. The researchers used high performance liquid chromatography with a diode array detector and mass spectrometry (HPLC-DAD-MS) to analyse chocolate to investigate the country of origin. Using chromatography to analyse chocolate is discussed in the article, Rapid Screening of Volatile and Semi-Volatile Organic Components in Cocoa Beans and Chocolate Products Using a Portable GC/MS System.

They tested 47 chocolate samples with three different types of cocoa beans from 12 different countries. The main components analysed were polyphenols including catechin and epicatechin. After the chemical analysis, using a statistical process known as Principal Component Analysis (PCA), they could generate polyphenol profiles that could be used to identify chocolate samples into different locations and bean type.

Could you tell your African from your South American chocolate?


Digital Edition

Chromatography Today - Buyers' Guide 2022

October 2023

In This Edition Modern & Practical Applications - Accelerating ADC Development with Mass Spectrometry - Implementing High-Resolution Ion Mobility into Peptide Mapping Workflows Chromatogr...

View all digital editions

Events

analytica 2024

Apr 09 2024 Munich, Germany

Korea Lab 2024

Apr 23 2024 Kintex, South Korea

Korea Chem 2024

Apr 23 2024 Seoul, South Korea

AOCS Annual Meeting & Expo

Apr 28 2024 Montreal, Quebec, Canada

SETAC Europe

May 05 2024 Seville, Spain

View all events