Milk chocolate
Milk chocolate is a form of solid chocolate containing cocoa, sugar and milk. It is the most consumed type of chocolate, and is used in a wide diversity of bars and other confectionery products. Milk chocolate contains smaller amounts of cocoa solids than dark chocolates do, and contains milk solids. While its taste has been key to its popularity, milk chocolate was historically promoted as a healthy food, particularly for children.
Major milk chocolate producers include Ferrero, Hershey, Mondelez, Mars and Nestlé; collectively these supply over half of the world's chocolate. Four-fifths of all milk chocolate is sold in the United States and Europe, and increasing amounts are consumed in both China and Latin America.
Chocolate was originally sold and consumed as a beverage in pre-Columbian times, and upon its introduction to Western Europe. The word chocolate arrived in the English language about 1600, but initially described dark chocolate. The first use of the term "milk chocolate" was for a beverage brought to London from Jamaica in 1687, but it was not until the Swiss inventor Daniel Peter successfully combined cocoa and condensed milk in 1875 that the milk chocolate bar was invented. Switzerland developed as the centre of milk chocolate production, particularly after the development of the conche by Rodolphe Lindt, and was increasingly exporting to an international market. Milk chocolate became mainstream at the beginning of the twentieth century following the launch of Milka, Cadbury Dairy Milk and the Hershey bar, inducing a dramatic increase in world cocoa consumption.
To provide ethical assurances on cocoa harvesting for consumers, Fair Trade and UTZ Certified chocolate was established in the 21st century.
History
The word "chocolate" was first used in English in 1604. The first instance of "milk chocolate" appeared soon after, referring to a drink of chocolate combined with milk. In 1687, Hans Sloane, an Irish physician and collector, introduced the beverage to London after seeing the people of Jamaica enjoying the drink. The preparation was promoted for its medicinal properties, and was manufactured by Nicholas Sanders and William White, and was joined by other milk chocolates around the city. From there, milk chocolate spread, first to France, where the pharmacist to Louis XVI, Sulpice Debauve, introduced the drink to the Court, and then further afield, reaching as far as the United States by 1834.Early attempts to make eating milk chocolate were foiled by the substantial water content of milk which did not willingly mix with cocoa butter ; efforts at combining the two produced chocolates that were an "oily and milky mess". In Dresden in the German Confederation, Jordan & Timaeus were developing a mechanism to produce hard chocolate using steam power. On 23 May 1839, they advertised a solid chocolate containing fresh milk, calling it "steam chocolate". However, that version of milk chocolate did not become successful and when major companies like Fry's of Bristol and Lindt of Zürich started producing eating chocolate in the 1840s, they only made dark chocolate.
In 1875, the Swiss entrepreneur and chocolatier Daniel Peter, based in Vevey and related to the Cailler family, first successfully combined cocoa mass, cocoa butter, and sugar with condensed milk to produce solidified milk chocolate. However, this was not meant to be eaten, but it was meant to be used for chocolate milk drinks; milk chocolate as we know it today was only created a decade later. In 1887, the first eating milk chocolate brand, Gala Peter, was finally launched. Daniel Peter called his product 'Gala' after the Greek word meaning 'milk'. Milk chocolate also benefited from another recent Swiss invention, Rodolphe Lindt's conche, which allowed the creation of a smoother chocolate.
Not only did milk soften the bitterness of chocolate and refined its taste, but it also lowered its production cost due to a lower cocoa content. As a consequence, Peter's recipe leaked to other nearby manufacturers: Cailler and Kohler. In 1898, Cailler opened its new factory at Broc, where milk chocolate began to be produced on a large scale. Peter also opened a larger factory at Orbe in 1901, before merging with Kohler. The same year, Suchard of Neuchâtel launched the Milka brand; Carl Russ-Suchard had previously developed a first milk bar in 1896. The Swiss chocolate industry also expanded in the late nineteenth century with the establishment of new companies, such as Frey and Tobler. From these developments, Switzerland soon dominated the chocolate market. Production increased dramatically, and by 1905, the country was producing of chocolate, a vast proportion of it exported.
Meanwhile, there were other developments outside Switzerland. Swiss dominance was challenged in 1905 by a product from England, Cadbury Dairy Milk. Although there had been other milk chocolates produced outside Switzerland before – Cadbury themselves had produced one in 1897 – they suffered from low sales. In contrast, Dairy Milk quickly rose in prominence and, by the 1920s, was the bestselling chocolate in the UK. Simultaneously, in 1900, Milton Hershey had introduced the first Hershey bar, which revolutionised the popularity of milk chocolate in the United States. Although initially only available in Pennsylvania, by 1906 it was sold across the country. Popularity blossomed, particularly following World War I, when the United States Army issued chocolate bars to troops, for many their first taste of milk chocolate. By 1911, Peter's milk chocolate recipe represented half of the world's chocolate consumption. Milk chocolate became the standard of what the public thought chocolate should be.
As a result of the increasing popularity of chocolate, especially among the working and middle-class, cocoa consumption began to grow extraordinarily; global demand grew 800 percent between 1880 and 1900. To meet these demands, cocoa production expanded, notably in West Africa, where the Forastero variety began to be mass cultivated in the early twentieth century. Although considered inferior to the Criollo variety, the Forastero type bean is more suited for the manufacture of milk chocolate and is cheaper to produce owing to its higher yields. Countries in West Africa eventually dominated world production of cocoa. Conversely, milk became the critical ingredient. Contrary to cocoa and sugar, milk spoils quickly, therefore it cannot be stored for long periods of time. This favored the implantation of large factories in the countryside, where abundant fresh milk supplies are readily available. The Cailler factory of Broc and the Hershey factory of Derry Township are typical examples. The popularity of milk chocolate and the wide availability of milk also favoured the creation in the 1930s of a new variety of chocolate containing even more milk: white chocolate.
Over the decades, milk chocolate manufacture spread worldwide and new brands appeared. In 1910, Arthur and George Ensor created the first milk chocolate in Canada, using milk from Jersey cows. At the same time, Belgian chocolate production also expanded rapidly. From small beginnings in the 1870s, by the 1920s, there were ninety chocolate manufacturers around Brussels alone. In 1926, Meiji brought out their bar, the first example to be made in Japan. Milk chocolate swiftly dominated chocolate sales in most markets. It even found a place during World War II, when US troops carried D Ration chocolate, nicknamed Logan Bars after Quartermaster Paul Logan, as an emergency supply. At the same time, new ways of presenting chocolate appeared, from different shapes, like Cadbury Buttons, to the profusion of boxed varieties that became a feature of Belgian chocolate.
At the same time, the number of independent manufacturers declined sharply. The first consolidations in the industry were in Switzerland, where the takeover of Lindt by Sprüngli took place in 1899, and Nestlé had already emerged as the largest manufacture in the country by 1929. However, pace quickened in the latter half of the century. During the last three decades of the twentieth century, there were over 200 takeovers in the industry. By 2001, over half the global chocolate market was held by 17 companies. By 2013, the top four manufacturers, Mondelez, Mars, Nestlé and Ferrero, comprised 49 percent of the sales.
In 2018, the global market for milk chocolate was worth $63.2 billion, and is expected to approach $73 billion by 2024. Consumption is dominated by the United States and Europe, which between them consumed over 80 percent of global production. However, the new century saw expansion in different markets. For example, between 2000 and 2013, the areas that saw the highest growth included the Middle East and Africa, Latin America. Even in China and Japan, which traditionally are places of very low milk consumption, milk chocolate sales increased at the start of the twenty-first century. Between 1999 and 2003, Chinese chocolate imports rose from $17.7 million to $50 million. By 2007, over 38 percent of chocolate sales in China were milk chocolate. By 2018, the value of sales by Japanese chocolatier Meiji was approaching that of the top producers in Europe, and the total sales by the group had surpassed the total for all confectionery sales by Hershey, putting the American company outside a top five ranking.
Although dark chocolate regained some popularity in the late twentieth century, milk chocolate remains the most preferred and consumed type of chocolate. Some chocolate consumers, who perceive it as saccharine and lacking in chocolate flavor, hold it in poor regard; chocolate maker John Scharffenberger for instance characterized the cocoa content as only being "food coloring".