milk chocolate
ingredient / ingredient-milk-chocolate
ミルクチョコレート
Milk chocolate is a solid chocolate product made by adding milk solids and sugars to chocolate liquor (cocoa mass). Under U.S. federal regulation (21 CFR 163.130), it is defined as a food containing at least 10% chocolate liquor and at least 12% milk solids; the provision does not use a name corresponding to "bitter".
On this page (7 sections)
Reading the bitterness
Milk chocolate is a solid product made by adding milk solids and sugars to chocolate liquor (cocoa mass). Under the U.S. federal regulation 21 CFR 163.130, it is defined as a food containing at least 10% chocolate liquor and at least 12% milk solids. This regulatory definition shows a lower bound for the ingredients; it is not a description that determines the impression of taste itself.
Under the same regulatory system, the category containing 35% or more chocolate liquor is given the names 「ビタースイート」 (in translation: "bittersweet") and 「セミスイートチョコレート」 (in translation: "semisweet chocolate"). By contrast, the milk chocolate category, containing 10% or more chocolate liquor, has no naming provision corresponding to "bitter." This comparison is a naming pattern limited to the scope of U.S. federal regulation.
In a temporal dominance of sensations (TDS) experiment using a commercial milk chocolate (made by Lotte) with over 21% cacao content, 54 panelists sequentially reported the attribute they perceived most strongly in the mouth. Among the 9 attributes set by the research team, 「カカオ」 (in translation: "Cacao"), which represents the bitterness and aroma derived from cacao mass, was treated together with 「ロースト」 (in translation: "Roast") as an attribute group related to bitterness, and was clearly distinguished from 「ココア」 (in translation: "Cocoa"), which represents the sweetness derived from cocoa.
When the same experimental data were analyzed with a statistical model, a relationship was found in which panelists with lower sensitivity to bitterness (a higher taste-recognition threshold) clearly had a shorter time during which bitterness-related attributes (Cacao, Roast) were dominant in the mouth. The strength of this relationship was not confirmed for other attribute groups, such as sweetness and richness. Men were also shown to have a shorter bitterness-dominance time than women, and the bitterness-dominance time tended to be longer with higher age, but all of these are estimates from a regression model based on a single brand and a single experiment.
Sources for this overview
Checked for this overview: Matched the 21 CFR 163.130 definition of at least 10% chocolate liquor and at least 12% milk solids. / Matched the absence of any naming provision corresponding to "bitter" in the milk chocolate category, and the limitation to U.S. regulation.
21 CFR 163.123 Sweet chocolate
Checked for this overview: Matched the naming provision for "bittersweet" and similar names at 35% or more chocolate liquor.
Checked for this overview: Used for the TDS experiment's sample conditions, panelist composition, the 9 attributes, and the bitterness-group classification of Cacao/Roast / Used for the relationship between bitterness-threshold sensitivity and bitterness-attribute dominance time, the trends by sex and age, and the limitation that these are from a regression model
Follow the connections
dark chocolate →differs from→ milk chocolate
Structured claims — open a section to read each claim's confidence, evidence and limits
Sensory (2)
Scope: Kurata et al. 2022; 54 panelists (29 men, 25 women, ages 24-64); TDS experiment with mean tasting time of 81.0±23.7 seconds; 367 observed dominance periods
Note: The mean value and standard deviation of the dominance duration itself for the bitterness attribute "Cacao" are not stated explicitly in the text (the text shows the attribute list and the coefficients of the subsequent regression model). This is the result for a single product with a single formulation of milk chocolate.
Show data
ingredient-milk-chocolate —has_sensory_attribute→ "In a temporal dominance of sensations (TDS) experiment on a commercial milk chocolate (cacao content over 21%, made by Lotte), one of 9 dominant attributes, "Cacao", was set as an attribute meaning the bitterness and aroma derived from cacao mass, and was classified into the bitterness-related group along with "Roast". This was clearly distinguished from "Cocoa", an attribute meaning sweetness (sweetness derived from cocoa)"Scope: Kurata et al. 2022, Model Rg (a model estimating coefficients separately by attribute group), Table 4
Note: The same model also confirmed sex (men tended to have a shorter bitterness dominance duration than women, coefficient -0.07) and age (older panelists tended to have a longer bitterness dominance duration, coefficient +0.33) within the bitterness-related group, but these are regression coefficients from variables selected by AIC, from a single sensory experiment on a single product. Threshold detection was performed with aqueous caffeine solution, and the paper does not state explicitly whether this may be treated as identical to bitterness detection sensitivity in chocolate.
Show data
ingredient-milk-chocolate —has_sensory_response→ "When the same TDS experiment was modeled with negative binomial regression, the coefficient for the panelists' 『苦味への感度』 (in translation: "sensitivity to bitterness"; the higher the threshold, the less sensitive) obtained from the bitterness detection threshold test was -1.41 for the bitterness-related attribute group (Cacao, Roast), a magnitude clearly larger than for the other attribute groups (sweetness-related 0.03, mouthfeel-related 0.08, richness-related -0.04). A tendency was shown for panelists less sensitive to bitterness to have a shorter dominance duration for bitterness-related attributes"Safety and regulation (2)
Scope: US 21 CFR 163.130
Show data
ingredient-milk-chocolate —is_defined_in_regulation_as→ "Defined as a food containing chocolate liquor at 10% or more and milk solids at 12% or more by weight, with no word corresponding to "bitter" used in the provision"Scope: Naming of chocolate products under United States federal regulation (21 CFR Part 163)
Note: Records a naming pattern in the standard: a name including "bitter" (semisweet / bittersweet chocolate) is given only to the 35%-or-more chocolate-liquor category, while no such name is given to the 10%-or-more milk chocolate category. One piece of evidence for the H10 reformulation (whether a product's positioning is mass-market or differentiated).
Show data
ingredient-dark-chocolate —differs_from→ ingredient-milk-chocolate