You’re just about to go shopping and you say to someone ‘do you fancy a bar of chocolate? Shall I pick up your favourite?’, only to be met with a quizzical look and the reply ‘ch…oc…olate? Is that something new?’
Yes, the Mandela effect is real, but this is the only real example (that thing with the Berenstain Bears was just stupid people). You have transitioned into a universe where Chocolate simply does not exist - not only as a product, but (as you will later discover) the plant Theobroma cacao and all of its close relatives are extinct - known only as fossils.
Everything else seems more or less normal, Just no chocolate. How are you going to describe to the world what chocolate was, to you?
It was a spice made from bitter-tasting seeds, like coffee beans but with much less caffeine. The fat was rendered from the seeds, and the fat and remaining solids were mixed in various proportions with milk and sugar to make a paste which could be hardened and shaped into pieces of candy, or mixed with hot water or hot milk and drunk. It was also made into an unsweetened powder which could be used to flavor various things, especially baked goods. It had a thick buttery mouthfeel and could be sweet or bitter depending on the proportions of milk and sugar, and an earthy flavor somewhat like truffles.
Hate to fight the hypothetical, but I’d be wary of giving away my situation. Instead I’d study everything going on in an attempt at determining if I’m suffering from some sort of mental illness.
Frightening hypothetical the more I think about it.
Smapti does a fine job, but fails to explore the whole “white chocolate” thing.
I’m also curious as to what happens with Easter in this alternate universe. A plethora of jellybeans, I’d guess.
But comes dang close…render the fat, mix just that (without the solids) with sweetener and flavors such as vanilla, and you get a whole 'nuther way to experience chocolate.
I would get me the fuck out of that shit universe before ever trying to explain the blessed glory that is the food of the gods. A universe without chocolate is not one I would willingly live in.
“Of growing prevalence in recent years are the white and pastel coatings, made either with hard butters or with cocoa butter. It is this latter type that some people erroneously (and illegally) call ‘white chocolate.’ There is no such thing as white chocolate, as can readily be seen by reviewing the federal standards of identity…. Even aside from the law, there is no moral justification for employing such a deceitful name. The only product used that even comes from the cocoa bean is the cocoa butter, and the faint reminiscence of chocolate flavor left in the cocoa butter is so slight as to be negligible.” (emphasis in original)
–Chocolate Production and Use by L. Russell Cook, 1963. Pg. 218
I would hope this board would be above contributing to the promotion of a scam, even in a thread posing a (heinous) hypothetical like this one. Perhaps references to “the fake chocolate that is erroneously, illegally and immorally promoted as ‘white chocolate’” could be allowed. I am sure the mods will create a sticky to address this scandal any day now…
It should be mentioned, IMO, that chocolate only becomes yummy after fermenting the beans. Beans do not taste like chocolate at all. I have never had unfermented beans, but they seem to be insipid and boring.
Like vanilla: who came up with the idea? IDK, but (s)he deserves our eternal gratitude.
Concerning a world without chocolate, the edifying case of the Spanish bishop of Chiapas in Mexico who tried to forbid chocolate as a potion of the devil comes to mind: he was killed. So should this hypotetical world.
I reckon a good many fermentation methods came about as a result of just trying to keep something - in the case of cocoa, just trying, somewhat unsuccessfully, to dry them out could result in a fairly fermented batch.
OK, fermentation is often spontaneous, but you still have to have the guts to taste the result. It would just look spoiled at first glance. And then there are a couple of additional steps to take to get something really good, which is not evident when you start from a product that is boring, tasteless (or so I read) and has no other uses except, perhaps, feed.
But then what would we use for the opprobrium that rightfully needs to be rained down upon the head of carob which, as Slithy_Tove so succinctly put it, “Tastes like sweetened chalk.” At least [white chocolate] has the proper mouth feel.
