Today’s edition of Chocolate Wars should have been a no-brainer. Britain has an international reputation for not being terribly good at food and Switzerland is known for its chocolate. But on the other hand, we’re talking about Dairy Milk here and I think that’s a valiant contender. Next time I’m in Switzerland I’m going to raid Migros for every chocolate brand and I can find and do a real Swiss chocolate war but for today, the Swiss contender is obviously Lindt.
Cadbury’s Dairy Milk
Dairy Milk is Cadbury’s flagship chocolate. It was created in 1905 with a higher proportion of milk than other Cadbury products – the phrase is “a glass and a half in every bar”. The nitpicky data researcher in me would like to know how the glass is and whether they use bigger glasses for bigger bars. Cadbury was bought by Mondelez back in 2010 and allegedly the Dairy Milk recipe got changed at the time. What definitely happened was that the shape of the bar was changed. Pre-Mondelez, Dairy Milk was blocky rectangles and now they’re rounded. We know the shape – and therefore surface areas – affects the taste.
Lindt Excellence Extra Creamy
There’s a lot of choice with Lindt and arguably for the same of equality, I should have chosen Lindt Classic for this series of wars but to go up against Dairy Milk, Cadbury’s milkiest and creamiest chocolate, it doesn’t feel inappropriate to have Excellence Extra Creamy. Lindt was established in 1836 – or rather, Sprüngli was. It merged with Lindt in 1899 and started making milk chocolate in 1934, which seems very late for a country known for its cows and creamy milk. Excellence came along in 1989.
Fight!
Let’s have a look. Dairy Milk comes in its classic purple wrapper and in small rounded rectangular chunks. Lindt comes in a cardboard box and wrapped in foil and its pieces are large thin squares. Cadbury is a little darker, a slightly more chocolatey brown.
And that holds out. These two are valiant enemies and I’d be delighted for either to win. Which one is creamier out of these two creamiest chocolates in the current battle? Cadbury with its glass and a half or Lindt with its Extra Creamy? Well, it’s Lindt – and by quite a bit. I don’t necessarily always like creaminess because it starts to taste more like milk and less like chocolate but in this case, it enhances the chocolate-ness and I especially like the way it cracks.
But on the other hand, Cadbury is much more chocolatey, while being creamy enough to keep it from tasting bitter or unpleasant or having an aftertaste. It’s richer and in a way it’s tastier. It doesn’t have that nice snap but the curves give it a nice full flavour.
There’s been an obvious winner in every round so far but this time, they’re both good. They’re both worthy. Which one is best comes down to whether you prefer a nice snappy creamy chocolate or a nice rich chocolate. It doesn’t feel like I can declare a winner, only a favourite. And I think my favourite is Lindt because it’s the only one that’s made me go “Ooh, I think I’ll have another bar of that” in Asda on my way back from the boathouse. Of course, that brings up another question, the one of novelty vs familiarity but let’s leave that one for today. I declare Lindt a favourite rather than a winner and we’ll see who our players are next month.