HOW THEY MAKE COCOA AND CHOCOLATE 81 



and for milk chocolate fresh milk is included in the 

 mixture. 



The beans are prepared in the same way as for cocoa 

 up to the stage of being crushed into nibs. To see what 

 happens to them next we are taken to the chocolate- 

 mill room. Here we find some large machines fitted 

 with granite millstones and others equipped with rollers. 

 The millstones occupy the centre of a capacious bowl. 

 Into this bowl bucketfuls of cocoa nibs are shot, and 

 in a few seconds they are ground into a fluid paste, 

 just as if they were being prepared for transformation 

 into cocoa. A liberal allowance of refined but melted 

 cocoa-butter is now poured into the paste, and, follow- 

 ing this, shower upon shower of fine white sugar. 

 The sugar absorbs both the butter supply that has been 

 set free in the grinding of the nibs and that which has 

 been added, and the resulting mixture is a stiff paste. 

 This paste is transferred to a near neighbouring 

 rolling machine; it emerges from the powerful rollers 

 in the form of thin friable sheets. The mass of sheets 

 is passed on to another rolling machine, called the roll 

 refiner, and the material after passing through this 

 second set of rollers is a fine dry powder. The powder 

 is put into a mixing machine, where it is automatically 

 stirred up with another allowance of cocoa butter to 

 form a smooth, soft, brown paste. The transformation 

 of the paste into a solid is the natural result of the 

 cocoa butter in the chocolate being brought under 

 the influence of cold air; just as the butter ingredient 

 in the cocoa beans begins to melt at a temperature of 

 about 91 Fahrenheit, so it begins to set in the paste at 

 a temperature below that melting-point. 



We have been on our feet for nearly four hours at a 



n 



