I was eating some chocolate when I imagined a world where Hershey’s was widely accepted, even by elitists, as the best chocolate.
Is consumer elitism just a facade for pretentious contrarians? Or are there things where even most snobs agree with the masses?
Also, I mean that the product is intrinsically considered to be the best option. I’m not considering social products where the user network makes the experience.
Edit: I was not eating Hershey’s. Hershey’s being the best chocolate is a bizarro universe in this hypothetical.
Hershey has always had a sort of vomit aftertaste. The presence of butyric acid is the culprit. This compound is created when milk undergoes a process called lipolysis, which breaks down fatty acids to extend the chocolate’s shelf life. Butyric acid is also found in human vomit, Parmesan cheese, and rancid butter. This is a direct result of Hershey engineering the chocolate to have a long shelf life. During the early 20th century, when refrigeration wasn’t reliable, the chocolate brand Hershey’s adopted a milk-stabilization process involving controlled lipolysis. The method kept milk usable for large-scale chocolate production as it traveled across country, but it also created butyric acid as a by-product. Butyric acid is perfectly safe to consume.
I always wondered if part of the problem is the long shelf life. I swear I’ve tasted some hersheys that was good. Perhaps it ages safely but rancid?
The aftertaste is very subtle, one might describe it as tangy. If you are an American and have never had foreign chocolate, you’ve probably only ever had chocolate with with milk that has undergone lipolysis; and you’d likely never notice it. For the first 5 years of my life I was raised in foster care by naturalized Europeans, so my formative years involved Swiss chocolate whenever I had it. Swiss chocolate uses milk that has not undergone lipolysis, and their chocolate is very smooth due to a process called conching. Conching is a mixing process with lots of heating and aeration which allows organic acids to evaporate creating a very uniform and smooth textured chocolate without bitter or tangy afternotes.