Hershey makes chocolate filled with the same glutamates you find in tyrosine crystals you see in hard cheeses like parmesan. This is due to a fluke of the way they keep there milk vacuum sealed to extend its shelf life. This creates a chocolate that has the same msg tang you get from extremely nice cheeses. It’s also the same flavor profile as stomach acid and it’s absolutely understandable that people not used to it would hate it. That said if Hersheys chocolate wasn’t so ubiquitous and was sold as a luxury item it would be treated like one of the best chocolates in the world as fancy msg chocolate
Hershey's sour flavor is from butyric acid, which is a byproduct of lipolysis during the "hershey process."
Butyric acid isn't a glutamate, and the hershey process really shouldn't be compared to more complex aging processes.
E: glutamates also form during the hershey process, but they aren't the source of the sour flavor and aren't comparable to aged cheeses. Most milk chocolates you buy will use milk solids that are high in glutamates, hershey's isn't special in this regard.
So this is not actually true. The flavor you're picking up on isn't glutamates, it's butyric acid. This comes from the breakdown of fat in milk into short-chain fatty acids; I can't remember why butyric accumulates so much, I think it has to do with the original length of the triglycerides in milk. But it's in aged cheeses like parm (and, when too strong, is indictive of mishandled milk), vomit (especially baby vomit - they drink milk, which has similar fats breaking down similarly in their stomachs), rancid butter, and Hershey's. I'm not sure offhand if it's because of how the milk is stored, but I do remember reading it was a side effect of using different cocoa powder in the past that created the flavor, which is recreated now.
That said if Hersheys chocolate wasn’t so ubiquitous and was sold as a luxury item it would be treated like one of the best chocolates in the world as fancy msg chocolate
At best it would be treated as some weird novelty item. I have never met a single non-American who tried Hershey's and thought it tasted good, or even just okay. Everyone is appalled by it. And even in the US, it's far from being unanimous, though in my experience, Americans who don't really like Hershey's don't hate it nearly as much as non-Americans who try it for the first time. They just think it's meh.
I mean Dubai chocolate is literally worse then the some of its parts. Novelty and cost has a large impact on how a product is received. Hersheys is incredibly commonplace and affordable and has been for a long time. But in a world where it was new and marketed like Dubai chocolate was it would be the biggest trend in chocolate with other chocolatiers trying to do there spin on the msg flavor.
Yeah, and Dubai chocolate is quite far from being the best chocolate in the world, no matter how they want to market themselves. Only Instagram influencers buy into that.
Just like nobody thinks miller is really "the champagne of beers".
But also Dubai chocolate tastes fine. Nobody has an instant disgusted reaction when trying Dubai chocolate (unless they hate pistachios). That can't be said for Hershey's.
Weihenstephaner didn’t try to make there own version of miller. But well respected brands like Lindt did make a Dubai chocolate bar. Your argument is based on your emotional reaction to a thing you don’t like and not engaging with the substance of my statement.
Fine, sure, the miller comparison was bad. Doesn't change the fact that very few people would say Dubai chocolate is the best chocolate in the world, it's a trend, the fancy new thing, a fad that will eventually fade.
And even if it doesn't, it's still a bad comparison with Hershey's because it doesn't matter whether it's mass-produced or a tiny small-batch production, cheap or prohibitively expensive, it's the taste that most people outside of America hate.
If Dubai chocolate had such a polarizing taste, it would never have gotten the popularity it has right now.
I believe that their argument is actually that just because Dubai chocolate commands a high price doesn't mean people consider it "the best" simply that it is currently popular and well marketed and that is with its inherent advantage of not causing a decent percent of the population to gag
There are savory chocolates anything over 90% is very much savory and there are savory chocolate and cocoa based dishes but again don't make people go "yum vomit"
So while your sort of right that Hershey would probably have a better reputation if it wasn't ubiquitous there is no world where it would be massively popular
We can actually look at early in it's production when they first tried to expand to global markets in Europe and where soundly rejected for tasting bad for a direct comparison and tried to remove the vomit flavor from their product but Americans who had adjusted to the flavor complained and they brought it back
Let me be frank, coming from a professional, non emotional place for you then. I worked in the higher end of the food industry for many years, at a skill level where high-end fine dining and food science intersect.
No one who knows food cares even the tiniest bit about Dubai chocolate, or thinks it's good, let alone the 'best in the world'. The only time it even gets mentioned is if someone is also trying to be an influencer, and they want clicks. It's a novelty that was fueled by online chatter, largely engaged in by people who don't know anything about food, and it made a bunch of money by being a flash in a pan. And that's fine. But no one who knows anything about chocolate thinks it's good.
You've confused a TikTok trend for a thing that has shaken up the culinary world. The only people who might think it's the best - or even really good - are terminally online.
You have confused my example of a product that is considered bad by pros and in the knows that is successful on its branding ala Supreme as the argument itself. My argument is that Hersheys milk chocolate if it were released today would be easily made the same kind of pop lux item that would trend enough to build a lasting impression and be used in higher end applications. Hersheys itself is not without merit. It’s the same as durian or Limberger they take a a few tries and then you could develop a taste for it and even crave it. Not everyone clearly but it would do extremely well as a luxury product. That said my argument is based on a hypothetical and I appreciate the back and forth
I don’t get the whole Dubai chocolate thing. It’s like someone said what if we filled a candy bar with Wheaties. The old kind before they were squares.
My theory is some PR agency got paid a bucket load to get influencers to make 'dubai choclate" trend to out flood the negative associations with modern slavery and so on that shows up on searches for Dubai.
Being exposed to a lot of European candy growing up. I can't stand Hershey bars. Actually before the 2000 they weren't bad or I have rose glasses. I can't stand them now.
The US imported it to Europe by the literal ton during WW2. Nobody bitched about it either, because it was free calories, which were rare and expensive at the time.
It's because we grow up with it and don't taste that flavor noticeably (same as being nose blind to your own stank), but even Americans who take a break for years (and throw up at some point during that) lose the "taste blindness" to the vomity flavor and start to hate it.
It’s due to the process that Hershey devised while developing their milk chocolate recipe.
It creates butyric acid in the milk, (what causes the vomit flavor) I always thought it was a bit weird when I was younger but I won’t lie it’s kinda grown on me.
Though you can get much better chocolate in the US of A and from US producers.
Dandelion comes to mind they’re really high-end though.
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u/Hairy_Ad8674 6h ago
Hershey makes chocolate filled with the same glutamates you find in tyrosine crystals you see in hard cheeses like parmesan. This is due to a fluke of the way they keep there milk vacuum sealed to extend its shelf life. This creates a chocolate that has the same msg tang you get from extremely nice cheeses. It’s also the same flavor profile as stomach acid and it’s absolutely understandable that people not used to it would hate it. That said if Hersheys chocolate wasn’t so ubiquitous and was sold as a luxury item it would be treated like one of the best chocolates in the world as fancy msg chocolate