Cacao and Coffee - the Commonalities
Cacao and coffee share many commonalities, not least their impressive flavour profiles! I have been doing some research into coffee after starting to work with some sustainably sourced coffee beans as an inclusion in my chocolate. The similarities in ethical sourcing practices between cacao and coffee got me wondering what else was similar, and I discovered that there were many things I didn’t know about coffee… much like at the beginning of my chocolate journey.
Here are a few of the commonalities that I have discovered in simple bullet points:
Both cocoa and coffee beans are the seeds of a fruit - the cocoa pod and the coffee cherry. The cocoa pod contains around 40-60 seeds, and the coffee cherry has two seeds per cherry.
Different varietals offer different flavour profiles and unique characteristics (size, appearance). For example, in cacao we have Trinitario, Criollo etc. In coffee there is Robusta, Arabica and so on.
Both cacao and coffee have to be manually harvested by hand, as they ripen on the tree at different times.
The impressive flavour profiles I mentioned… cacao has over 600 aromatic compounds, coffee over 1000!
The roasting process in fine chocolate and fine coffee has the aim of bringing out and enhancing the natural, inherent flavour profile of the beans.
‘Dark’ in chocolate refers to the amount of cocoa solids in the recipe, whereas in coffee ‘dark’ is referring to the length of the roast.
Both act as stimulants; cacao has theobromine and coffee has caffeine.
It is well known that chocolate and coffee are a match made in heaven, and when you consider the similarities between the two it’s easy to see why. So why is fine coffee so far ahead of chocolate when it comes to recognition as a fine product when it’s been consumed as a drink for over 4,000 years? Well, the answer to that one is long and complex and involves a deep dive into the history of chocolate. I’ll save that for another post!
