Someone at another message board I frequent posted a link to a website that contained a HTML script quiz on mostly obscure facts about Canada. One of them mentioned that Arthur Ganong marketed the first chocolate bar in 1910. After another poster mentioned that he was surprised that the chocolate bar wasn’t invented until then, I decided to do a little Googling.
Many sites confirm that Ganon invented the chocolate bar in 1910. Well that’s good…
…but…
…many other sites claim that Milton Hershey invented the chocolate bar in 1900.
Just to complicate matters more, another site claims that the English company “Fry’s” in Bristol produced chocolate bars in 1847.
Not to be outdone, the Dutch throw their hat in the ring as well with another site claiming that “the first chocolate bar was made in 1828 when Conrad Van Houten, a Dutch chemist, invented a cocoa press that mixed cocoa butter with finely ground sugar.”
Now maybe we can rule out the Dutch, since cocoa butter and sugar make white chocolate which technically isn’t chocolate.
Hershey marketed the first milk chocolate bar. He didn’t invent anything. Milk chocolate was invented by Daniel Peter from Switzerland.
What makes you think white chocolate “technically” isn’t chocolate? You might be right, I’m just curious. Incidentally, the Dutch also invented dutched chocolate, which is what you need for candy bars.
Anyway, I’m going to go out on a limb and say the Olmec indians discovered chocolate.
Wikipedia confirms the Fry (1847) and Peter (1875) points. Note that it doesn’t specify that they made bars, just that they made eating chocolate (previously it had been drinking only) and milk chocolate.
The Cadbury site promotes the idea of Fry’s being the first chocolate bar, but then they would (to be fair, they do say that no one really knows). They say here that, “The Fry’s Chocolate Cream bar is one of the oldest chocolate bars in the world, having been launched in 1866.” They do claim that they were making milk chocolate bars in 1897, but it was a coarser recipe than the Swiss one which began to dominate the British market at around this time. This implies to me that the Swiss were making milk chocolate bars (as opposed to boxes) at this time, otherwise the two would not be in direct competion.
Looking at the Hershey site, they say that they opened for business in 1894. Still, their history is a little vague and doesn’t even mention Fry, so I’m not sure that I trust their site. They seem to say that they were making “Hershey’s sweet chocolate (known today as dark or semi-sweet chocolate)” in 1894, but no mention of milk chocolate.
White chocolate is not really chocolate because the only cacao it has in it is cacao fat (cocoa butter). Real chocolate also contains cacao solids. Here is the FDA’s definition of white chocolate.
I always thought it tasted funny, but never knew why.
I checked out Tannahill’s Food in History, my worn and battered Joy of Cooking, and my thrift-store encyclopedia. All of them skip gently over the subject without naming names.
I think Wikipedia called it right - it’s believed that Fry did it (or something like it) first, but there’s room for doubt. Also note that Wikipedia has a slightly different take on van Houten than the site referenced in the OP.
Thanks for the info on white chocolate. I always thought it tasted a little funny, but didn’t really think about it much. The rest of my post was referring to the actual topic at hand - the chocolate bar and the invention thereof.