I have written before about the scam that is dark chocolate - how everyone really wants milk (and/or white) chocolate; but gets coerced, shamed, or indoctrinated into that inversion of enjoyment which is dark chocolate.
Dark chocolate is the decadence of the over-indulged and satiated; and in this respect it is analogous to modernist classical music.
Everybody who genuinely likes classical music, most enjoys and appreciates pre-20th century music of one sort or another - the music that came before Schoenberg and Stravinsky - whether from the renaissance, baroque, classical or romantic era. The music of (for example) Tallis, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, or Wagner.
However, when people attend or watch on TV a classical music concert, or listen to a classical radio station, they are nearly-always compelled to hear a significant percentage of "modern" classical music - relentlessly dissonant, atonal, or in some fashion raucous, or simply incoherent and mediocre.
This is because the classical music producers, conductors, performers, and composers have - by the time they reach adulthood - gorged on pre-modern music for hours-per-day from early childhood until they are heartily sick of it; and they want nothing other than to hear good music subverted, twisted, mocked, parodied, or spoiled - hence the liking for "modernism" in music.
Modernist music is the decadence of the satiated professional, being force-fed to the amateur and music-lover, in a spirit of revenge or sheer spitefulness.
And the same applies to the chocolate chefs, designers, manufacturers, and connoisseurs; they have stuffed themselves with sweet milk or white chocolates until their palates crave bitterness, sourness or and salt.
Instead of the smooth creamy texture of good milk/ white chocolate; they instead desire dry, powdery, brittle, even salty (!) experiences.
But rather than do the rational thing and eat something else other than chocolate, something that gratifies their anti-chocolate desires; they instead ruin the chocolate.
Instead of leaving ordinary people to enjoy their sweet and smooth chocolate - they spitefully demand to insert dark chocolate where it is not wanted:
In selection boxes, when they mix nasty dark with delicious mild/ whites. Or (when prevented) by encrusting or lacing or dusting the creamy-sweet milk or white chocolate, with the bitter-dryness of The Black Stuff.
And it is the moderate, common-sense, chocolate-loving amateur who must suffer the consequences of the professionals' dark depravity.
14 comments:
Ha, as it happens I was eating a piece of dark chocolate at the very moment I clicked to check your blog!
Dark chocolate tastes like chocolate. Milk chocolate is chocolate-flavored candy. Saying dark chocolate appreciators are ruining chocolate is like saying someone who prefers black coffee to one of those milkshake-like concoctions from Starbucks should just drink something else if he doesn't like the natural sweet richness of coffee.
I don't mean to give you PTSD, but I really, genuinely enjoy dark chocolate. The comments section of your last article on the subject showed an overwhelming support of dark chocolate among men who have transgressed our current social values in so many ways, so I doubt a desire to impress anyone is a factor. Why is it so hard for you to accept some people really do like dark chocolate?
@Wm - To quote WS Gilbert: "I have no desire to press hardly on you, but such a revolutionary sentiment is enough to make an honest sailor shudder. "
@Evan: This blog is a Safe Space: Here is a place where anyone (of any sex, race, creed, or colour) can admit "I do not Really enjoy chocolate, and would rather eat something else"; and this acknowledgement will not be held against him.
well, i guess now it makes sense that i prefer dark chocolate.
@Laeth - Exactly what I would have expected...
Ron Tomlinson has left a comment:
...A homily along the lines of Aslan's warning: "that is what happens to those who pluck and eat fruits at the wrong time and in the wrong way. The fruit is good, but they loathe it ever after."...
i read this aloud to my wife just now and she had two reactions. one was to laugh heartily, especially at the last paragraph. and the other was to say that you have likely never tried really good dark chocolate (but this is of course what an indoctrinated dark chocolate fiend would say).
I've also just read this blog post aloud to my wife. She is a dark chocolate enthusiast and I sincerely hope Professor Charlton's wise words will make her rethink her depravity.
@Mal - I endeavour to give satisfaction.
The trouble is that the denunciation is incomplete: there are two kinds of dark chocolate. The cheap kind put into assortments, which tastes like nothing. And the ludicrously expensive kind that *does* taste like something, but includes 'tasting notes' that purport to hallucinate that it tastes like "cream, cashews, miso, honeysuckle, plum", which -- it does not quite taste like that many things all at once, and so the makers must be pronounced guilty of false advertisting. There are also typically 'international chocolate award' stickers attached and a note that explains the act of consuming the chocolate to be a morally virtuous contribution to protecting the rare Bicknell's Thrush from extinction.
I suspect this latter format of chocolate is aimed at unrepentant coffee-bean snobs who, for one reason or another, are no longer able to consume coffee for health reasons.
@Serhei - Thanks for a valuable clarification.
The point about coffee is well made: real chocolate - milk or white - is a perfect complement to coffee; but self-styled "dark" chocolate has a flavour that is similar enough to clash horribly with coffee.
Further research has led me to conclude that - for reasons I do not understand - chocolatiers continually and inescapably generate dark chocolate as a waste product of the manufacture of real chocolate.
Dark chocolate is always accumulating, requiring storage and disposal; and the makers are desperate to get rid of it.
Therefore, it is both convenient and profitable to use this dc to bulk-up or otherwise adulterate the supply of real chocolate.
Dark chocolate is a lenten food, milk chocolate isn't (for the Orthodox at least).
A couple years ago, our family went to Ecuador where we experienced the more expensive version of chocolate. Apparently it is a different subspecies that is not commercially viable. Well, I hate commercial dark chocolate, but the real Ecuadorian stuff? Amazing. 100% chocolate without a hint of bitterness.
I recently got a bar of 100% Peruvian, but I have not tried it yet. We'll see which category it falls into.
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