Why American chocolate tastes so weird
For years, British people told me American chocolate tasted like vomit. I thought that was a bit dramatic. I grew up in Canada with American brands around me, and I remembered liking Hershey’s. Surely it couldn’t be that bad?
Then I tried a plain Hershey’s bar beside Cadbury Dairy Milk for my April 2024 video. Oh. I understood the complaint immediately. I had been ready to defend a familiar childhood brand, and instead I needed a drink to get rid of the taste.
The chocolate I grew up with
Living in England had already changed my idea of a good chocolate bar. After eight years here, Dairy Milk was my personal gold standard. I liked how creamy it was, with a proper chocolate flavour and sweetness that didn’t feel too much. Galaxy fans may disagree. That’s fine, but I’m sticking with Cadbury.
Hershey’s was familiar for a different reason. It was something I could get in convenience stores growing up in Canada. I particularly remembered enjoying Cookies ‘n’ Creme. I hadn’t eaten a plain Hershey’s bar in years, though, so this was partly a return to something I remembered liking, rather than a comparison between two bars I regularly bought.
Getting hold of it took more effort than buying the Cadbury. I went into two American sweet shops in Canterbury. The first didn’t have the Hershey’s I wanted; the second did. I paid nearly £3 for a 43g bar. That was the price of my imported bar for this 2024 test, and it felt expensive for something so small.
Turning the packets over
The Dairy Milk tasted just as good as I expected: creamy, chocolatey and sweet without being overwhelmingly sugary. When I turned over its wrapper, milk appeared first in the ingredient list, followed by sugar, cocoa butter and cocoa mass. There were other ingredients too, including vegetable fats. This wasn’t a claim that the bar contained only milk and cocoa.
That particular wrapper stated a minimum of 20% cocoa solids and 20% milk solids, with actual milk solids of 23%. Those numbers describe the packet I held up. They don’t tell us the recipe of every British chocolate bar, and they don’t mean every bar uses exactly the minimum cocoa content printed on its label.
There is also a wrinkle in comparing legal minimums. England’s regulations distinguish milk chocolate with at least 25% total dry cocoa solids from a family milk chocolate category with at least 20%. The latter requires more milk solids. The US milk chocolate standard specifies a minimum of 10% chocolate liquor, calculated under its own definition. That isn’t a neat table of what these two manufacturers actually put in their bars.
The Hershey’s wrapper began its ingredient list with sugar, then milk and chocolate. That caught my attention beside the Cadbury wrapper, but reading the two lists was only part of the comparison. I still had to eat it.
An apology to the British chocolate complainers
I was excited to try the Hershey’s. Then I took a bite and got the taste people had been describing. It gave me goosebumps. Even smelling it afterwards, I couldn’t get away from that association. Sorry, British people. I had thought you were exaggerating, and my reaction ended up being just as dramatic.
I did wonder whether I had primed myself. I’d read about the taste before eating the bar, so perhaps expecting something unpleasant made it more noticeable. I can’t untangle that from one taste test. What I can say is that I genuinely disliked this bar, even allowing for my expectations, and wanted something to drink afterwards.
That was the surprise for me. A brand I remembered quite happily from childhood tasted completely different beside the chocolate I’d become used to in England. I still love trying food, but this particular return to Hershey’s wasn’t the nostalgic treat I expected. Dairy Milk won my comparison comfortably.
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