Mondo Knows Facts

Conching smooths chocolate for hours

The mixture is kneaded and aerated until its particles are too small to feel Rodolphe Lindt introduced the conche in 1879, and the machine changed chocolate from gritty to silky. It works the mass of cocoa, sugar and fat for hours or days at warm temperatures, breaking up clumps, coating particles in cocoa butter and driving off harsh volatile acids. Longer conching makes a milder, rounder bar. It sits in Mondo's food collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Where this comes from

Science History Institute

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Tags: chocolate, conching, texture

Conching smooths chocolate for hours: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?
The mixture is kneaded and aerated until its particles are too small to feel. The figure is taken from Science History Institute, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a food fact?
Yes. It sits on the Food shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?
The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.