Why chocolate needs tempering: cocoa butter can freeze six ways, and only one snaps
30seconds
Two bars of dark chocolate can share every ingredient and still differ completely: one glossy, snappy and firm, the other dull and crumbly. The secret is cocoa butter, which can freeze in six different crystal patterns, each with its own melting point. Only one of them, form V, melting at about 34 °C, gives the shine and the snap, and getting the fat to choose it is called tempering.
Run the tempering yourself on a live grid of chocolate crystals: melt, cool, stir, warm, pour, and see which crystals win.
Deep dive · 4 min
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