Does Cadbury chocolate taste different in different countries?

By Elle MetzBBC News Magazine

Woman tasting a chunk of Cadbury's chocolate

In today's Magazine

Moves to prevent retailers importing British-made Cadbury chocolate into the US have scandalised some expats, who say US-made Cadbury chocolate is inferior - and who often view Hershey's, the most popular US chocolate, as beneath contempt. But how big is the difference?

"American chocolate is rubbish," says John Hanson the owner of The British Shoppe, a UK food store based in Orlando, Florida.

"Cadbury's chocolate tastes like chocolate," he says, "whereas Hershey's chocolate tastes like wax."

He's not the only one who thinks so. More than 37,000 people have signed a petition to boycott Hershey's, which has the licence to produce Cadbury chocolate in the US, and regards imported British-made Cadbury chocolate as a trademark infringement.

Some have added comments along with their signatures, like Dayne Thomas from Richfield, Minnesota who writes: "Maybe the reason people prefer British chocolate is that it's not the over-sugared minimal cocoa butter garbage that Hershey's makes. If they want to sell more product, how about they make a better product??"

It's clear there are lots of people out there who love Hershey's chocolate - global net sales amounted to $7.4bn in 2014.

Of six people the BBC asked to compare Cadbury and Hershey's chocolate, two (both Americans) gave Hershey's a high score - four out of five.

It's also clear that neither Cadbury nor Hershey's are gourmet brands. They produce everyday chocolate - "candy", as they say in the US.

So what is it that differentiates these chocolates? We carried out a taste test with British and American tasters, spoke to experts, and tried to get some answers out of the companies.

Ishmael Buckner holds a piece of chocolate, preparing to taste it. He has a thoughtful look on his face.

Alexandra Dimsdale tastes a piece of chocolate

Everyone in our taste test could tell the difference between the Cadbury Dairy Milk and Hershey's milk chocolate. They used terms like "harder", "more bitter", and "not as rich" to describe Hershey's, even when they liked it. None of the tasters selected it as their favourite of the three samples and two said they would not choose to eat it at all.

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A process called lipolysis partially sours the milk, and creates butyric acid - a compound found in parmesan cheese and baby spit-up”

When it came to distinguishing between the US-made and UK-made Cadbury chocolate one taster noted that they were "quite similar", another thought that they tasted exactly the same. Those who detected a difference didn't always agree on much beyond that. One thought the US sample was creamier and more gooey, another felt the opposite, saying that the UK sample was "more melty". One said the US sample was sweeter, another disagreed. And the tasters were divided on which of the two was better.

Interestingly, it was a British expat in the US, Alexandra Dimsdale, who immediately recognised the taste of "normal" British-made Cadbury chocolate, and identified a "weird aftertaste" in the US-made version - and in Hershey's too.

In a test conducted by BBC Newsround, British and American children tasted the two types of Cadbury chocolate. Surprisingly, most of the British children preferred the US-made Cadbury chocolate, while most of the American children liked the British-made version better.

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Children in the UK and US take the chocolate challenge for BBC Newsround

The main ingredients of any milk chocolate are cocoa, milk and sugar. That much they all have in common. What may differ are the proportions, the taste of the raw ingredients, the way they are mixed together, and any extra ingredients.

According to Lawrence Allen, a former executive at Hershey's and Nestle and author of Chocolate Fortunes: The Battle for the Hearts, Minds and Wallets of China's Consumers, three main factors determine the taste of the finished product:

the amount of cocoa
how long it is mixed
the flavour of the milk

Cocoa

The ground-up cacao bean is made of cocoa butter, and non-fat cocoa powder (or "cocoa mass," as it appears in the list of ingredients of a British-made Dairy Milk bar). Taken together these may be referred to as dry cocoa solids, or chocolate liquor. Generally a more expensive and higher quality chocolate has a higher proportion of cocoa, which may explain why people who don't like Hershey's sometimes state that it contains less cocoa than Cadbury chocolate.

A look at the different minimum standards for chocolate imposed in the US and the European Union might also lead someone to this conclusion. Milk chocolate in the EU must contain 30% cocoa, whereas in the US it need only contain 10%.

But these figures are very deceptive. The US requirement for 10% cocoa refers only to non-fat cocoa powder. The overall amount of cocoa, including cocoa butter, will be higher. In the EU, meanwhile, the requirement for chocolate to contain 30% cocoa refers to both cocoa powder and cocoa butter, so the percentage of cocoa powder alone will be lower.

Sarah Geisman takes a bite of a piece of chocolate

It "tastes like home" - the verdict of a US expat in London, Sarah Geisman, on Hershey's

In addition, the EU allows a different kind of "milk chocolate" to be sold in the UK and Ireland (it must be labelled "family milk chocolate" anywhere else in the EU). This contains at least 20% cocoa (powder and butter combined) and 20% milk solids - and Cadbury Dairy Milk falls into this category. The list of ingredients on the back of a British-made Cadbury Dairy Milk bar says it contains a minimum of 20% cocoa solids. When it comes to "milk solids" the label says: "20% minimum, actual 23%".

So, how much cocoa does a Hershey's bar contain? According to Jeff Beckman, the company's director of corporate communications, it contains about 30% dry cocoa solids - cocoa powder and cocoa butter combined. About 1.5 times as much as a bar of Cadbury's Dairy Milk.

It's also notable that Cadbury sources all its cocoa from West Africa, while this is only one of the places Hershey's buys it. There could be a slight difference in taste.

Mixing

The more time spent combining the ingredients, the smoother the resulting chocolate will be, says Lawrence Allen. A luxurious chocolate, like Lindt, may be mixed for 12 hours or more, he says, while a mass-market bar, like Hershey's or Cadbury's, may be mixed for only two or three.

Our tasters identified Cadbury's as creamier than Hershey's. One described Hershey's as "chalky", two described it as "grainy". Does this suggest it is mixed less than Cadbury's?

We may never know, as both companies declined to say how long they mixed their chocolate.

Milk

Milk tastes different in different countries. It may even taste different in different parts of one country, depending on the breed of cow, and what the cow is fed on.

"I know people in Australia who are die-hard Cadbury advocates," says Lawrence Allen. "But they go on business trips to the UK, and they bring their own chocolate."

This, he thinks, may be because Australian milk gives the chocolate a distinctive flavour.

The old Dairy Milk slogan "A glass and a half of milk in every half-pound bar of chocolate" has now become: "The equivalent of 426ml of fresh liquid milk in every 227g of milk chocolate"

So maybe a difference in the milk would account for a difference in the taste, if there is one, between British-made and US-made Cadbury chocolate?

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Hershey's and Cadbury chocolate bars contain an almost identical quantity of sugar - about 56g per 100g”

Actually, that seems unlikely. Hershey's makes Cadbury chocolate using Cadbury "crumb" - a sandy-textured paste of powdered cocoa, milk and sugar - shipped from the other side of the Atlantic. It's hard to imagine there is much difference between the crumb that ends up in US-made Cadbury chocolate, which is produced in Ireland, from the crumb produced in Herefordshire for British-made Cadbury chocolate.

Different milk, however, could help explain the difference between Hershey's chocolate and Cadbury's - and so could what happens to the milk in the production process.

According to Jennifer Earle, a UK-based chocolate consultant, Cadbury first combines the milk with sugar and then dehydrates it. This caramelised milk is then mixed with cocoa. Meanwhile, Hershey's mixes the cocoa with sugar and then adds dehydrated milk. The resulting taste is "very different", Earle says.

But there's more. Hershey's puts milk through a process called lipolysis, Earle says. This partially sours the milk, and creates butyric acid - a compound found in such diverse substances as parmesan cheese and baby spit-up. It gives the chocolate a "tangy taste" as Earle puts it. The chief advantage of this method is that chocolate can remain on shelves longer without the taste changing - but it's also a taste American consumers have become accustomed to and nowadays even expect.

Other ingredients

If you look on the back of a bar of Hershey's and a bar of British-made Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate you'll notice a difference. Hershey's lists sugar as its first ingredient while Cadbury lists milk first. It's obligatory to list ingredients in descending order by weight, so perhaps this means the Hershey's bar contains more sugar than milk - and vice-versa in the case of the Cadbury bar?

Lists of ingredients from British-made Dairy Milk (top), Hershey's, and US-made Dairy Milk

Actually, no. If you look at the back of a US-made Cadbury bar, you'll find it's the same as the Hershey's - sugar comes first.

The difference, Beckman explains, is that milk in chocolate in the US is measured in evaporated form, while milk in British chocolate is measured in its heavier liquid form. There is the same amount of milk in the US-made and British-made Cadbury bars.

The labels also show that the Hershey's and Cadbury chocolate bars contain an almost identical quantity of sugar - about 56g per 100g.

Nutrition information British-made Dairy Milk (top) and Hershey's

Another apparent difference concerns the emulsifiers listed on the back of each bar. The US version lists soy lecithin and PGPR while the UK version lists E442 and E476. However, these are the same things. Soy lecithin is E442 and PGPR is E476.

But there is one significant difference between British and US chocolate among these other ingredients. The UK, like the rest of the EU, allows up to 5% non-cocoa vegetable fats to be blended with the crumb, along with cocoa butter. The US does not.

According to Beckman, this is the main difference between US-made and British-made Cadbury chocolate.

Cadbury lists these non-cocoa vegetable fats on the Dairy Milk label as "palm, shea" - palm oil and shea butter - but the company declined to reveal the exact percentage.

Headshots of Ishmael Buckner, Sarah Geisman and Sidhartha Nilakanta

American Testers
	Ishmael Buckner	Sarah Geisman	Sidhartha Nilakanta
US Cadbury	4 out of 5	4	4
	"Melt in the mouth sensation"	"Maybe a tiny bit chalky"	"Creamy and sticky"
UK Cadbury	5	5	3
	"Simpler, softer...Dainty"	"Little more melty"	"Wasn't bad, just average"
Hershey's	4	4	2
	"A little bit more bitter"	"Not as rich"	"Little chalky"

Headshots of Ranil Dissanayake, Alexandra Dimsdale and Jenna Mullen

British Testers
	Ranil Dissanayake	Alexandra Dimsdale	Jenna Mullen
US Cadbury	3 out of 5	3	3
	"Tastes really normal"	"Chemical fruity taste"	"Quite creamy"
UK Cadbury	2	5	3
	"Sticky and rich"	"Delicious and comforting "	"Tastes the same"
Hershey's	1	2	1
	"Really really sweet"	"More oily"	"It was bad"

Lawrence Allen says Europeans have a prejudice against American chocolate."The chocolate tradition in America evolved differently than it did in Europe," he says. While chocolate is a delicacy or at the very least a treat in Europe, it is a mass-market product of the everyman in the US, he says.

However, this applies more to continental Europe than to the UK, where Dairy Milk and its competitors such as Galaxy account for a large percentage of chocolate sales.

Jennifer Earle believes people care about tiny differences between one product and another because chocolate is deeply personal.

"Childhood memories, isn't it?" she says. "Chocolate is one of the most unique flavours."

People become accustomed to a certain taste and the comfort associated with it and they can tell immediately if something isn't quite right.

And if Earle were living in the US and suddenly cut off from British-made Cadbury's chocolate?

"I'd be very upset," she says.

If you take away someone's childhood chocolate you quite literally take them out of their comfort zone.

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Does Cadbury Dairy Milk taste different to you in different countries? And how do you think it compares to Hershey's, or other regular milk chocolate? A selection of your comments will be published.

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