I recently had 72% Cacao Ghirardelli chocolate and while
letting it melt in my mouth, I tasted sort of a fruity taste (like a cherry-ish flavor), yet the ingredients are unsweetened chocolate, sugar, cocoa butter, vanilla, and soy lecithin (an emulsifier). Why did I taste this cherry-ish flavor? Are the ingredients mislabeled, because the description on the back of the package notes that this fruity flavor does exist?
Ghirardelli: "The warm, fruity, slightly sweet flavor remained consistent until the final melting morsel when, for a brief moment, I would have sworn I was sucking on a dried cherry. I couldn’t help but move it around on my tongue in an effort to coat all of my taste buds, and the lingering flavor had me literally sucking my cheeks in to join the party."
"The Ghirardelli bar was consistently fruity and somewhat sweet..."
If you think you taste coconut, cinnamon, or chili, you're not mistaken. All these flavors and more, like pineapple, orchid, orange, cherry and cloves, are notes that belong to chocolate.
The chemical makeup of sugar is pretty similar no matter what foods one eats. And as the rest of the chocolate melts, the sugar remains. It is possible that the human tastebuds simply confuse the sugars in dark chocolate with the sweetness of fruits. That would be my guess based on my own tastebuds, while the rest of my sense of flavor is greatly limited by my anosmia. I couldn't tell between large cherries and Mozart candies if I were blindfolded.
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