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Chocolate

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Re: Chocolate
Post by lyonheart   » Wed Jan 14, 2015 9:02 pm

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Hi Saber964,

For all such various details, I recommend the book "The Emperors of Chocolate" by Brenner [2000] that goes into some detail regarding cocoa bean harvesting besides the background of both the Hershey and Mars companies; all sorts of fascinating stuff.

Sodar is extremely unlikely precisely because of its poor communications, ie transportation to get the beans out quickly makes it doubtful its a major producer, besides the likelihood of being too high if the climate weren't also off [alongside or near rivers are where you'll find cocoa bean trees which are extremely sensitive to their environment and pests etc], from the probability of a central continental plateau versus coastal lowlands where the cocoa beans generally prosper, though there are higher altitude varieties.

Obviously, mixing different beans can produce similar popular flavors, when those plantations are destroyed by pests.

There is also textev for Corisande chocolate, IIRC.

L


saber964 wrote:
TN4994 wrote:*quote="BarryKirk"*Page 106 OAR... Sweet Dohlaran chocolate

Chocolate comes from Dohlar.*quote*
But where are the cocao beans grown?
Switzerland produces Swiss Chocolate, and Barvaria produces Barvarian Chocolate; but neither locale can grow Cocoa.



The various chocolates are the cocoa butter content percentage.
Any snippet or post from RFC is good if not great!
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Re: Chocolate
Post by phillies   » Thu Jan 15, 2015 10:32 pm

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Clearly the most important objective of all genetic engineering in the terraforming effort was the cocoa plant which thrives in every climate zone from 1 to 10 and produces enormous amounts of cocoa of indescribable richness. Suppressing the plagues that would have rendered humanity extinct was perhaps priority 2. A distant and weak 2.
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Re: Chocolate
Post by fallsfromtrees   » Fri Jan 16, 2015 3:47 am

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phillies wrote:Clearly the most important objective of all genetic engineering in the terraforming effort was the cocoa plant which thrives in every climate zone from 1 to 10 and produces enormous amounts of cocoa of indescribable richness. Suppressing the plagues that would have rendered humanity extinct was perhaps priority 2. A distant and weak 2.

I think we can safely assume that the planners of OPeration Ark would have excluded things like bubonic plague, black death, smallpox, AIDS, from the ships being sent out, so yeah, suppressing those would have been of secondary importance.
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Re: Chocolate
Post by hdtran   » Mon Jan 19, 2015 12:51 am

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saber964 wrote:....

The various chocolates are the cocoa butter content percentage.



Err, not quite. The dutch (near Belgium) developed the dutch process to extract cocoa powder with alkali. This makes chocolate easier to emulsify & cook. The Swiss developed milk chocolate. (These are gross oversimplifications, but that's my story, and I'm sticking to it). Higher cocoa solids percentage are typically indicative of better quality, but pure chocolate is a bitter substance. Typically, milk chocolate has lower cocoa percentage than dark.

Given a choice between chocolate and coffee--which one do you take? (Both!!!)
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Re: Chocolate
Post by BobG   » Wed Jan 21, 2015 1:27 am

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A good reference on the technology of chocolate making can be found in the Royal Society' of Chemistry's The Science of Chocolate. I've had a copy of it for almost 15 years.

http://www.rsc.org/Shop/books/2008/9780854049707.asp

-- Bob G
SF & Fantasy: The only things better than Chocolate.
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