Pairing flavours with chocolate
Much like savoury foods, chocolate has many varieties all with their own flavour profile and even flavour categories. From bitter dark, to sweet white, milky milk and sour ruby chocolate, there’s a fair few options to choose from…
by Joe Baker
09 June 2023
Pairings for milk chocolate
The classic flavour of milk chocolate balances sweetness and bitter cocoa, and is elevated when you add fruity and nutty flavours. You can see a couple below that best pair with milk chocolate.
Hazelnut – The savoury flavour of roasted hazelnuts mixed with milk chocolate balances the flavour profile of savoury and sweet, setting your tastebuds alight!
Dried fruits – While best suited to darker chocolates, pairing dried fruit with milk chocolate elevates the sweetness and imparts a natural fruit flavour. Though nuts are often added to balance the sweetness this adds.
What to pair with dark chocolate
Bitter, intense, rich and with hints of fruit. All wonderful ways to describe dark chocolate, but what if we could elevate these flavours? Fruit often adds to the intense flavour dark chocolate has, hence why so many of our favourite dark chocolates use dried fruit!
There’s a myriad of flavours to achieve a mouth watering profile and the below options are a great way to get started!
Figs – Not only found in your grandmas biscuit tin (though who doesn’t love a fig roll), figs impart a sweet, honey like flavour and help heighten the sweetness and balance the bitterness of the dark chocolate.
Orange – Most well known in the shape of an orange made by someone named Terry, the bitterness of orange can actually complement the dark chocolate flavours and make for a tangy experience.
Pairing white chocolate
Sweet vanilla with a smooth milky texture, we’ve all tasted white chocolate in some capacity or another in our lifetime and it’s loved by many. It’s also a great chocolate for flavouring due to its sweet profile!
The sweetness of white chocolate is often best balanced with tart and bitter notes, hence why we see so many red fruits paired with white chocolate. Try the options below to get started on balancing sweet and tart.
Lemon – Lemon and white chocolate tart, lemon and white chocolate drizzle cake, limoncello flavour, it goes on! A versatile flavour where its sour properties play best with the sweetness of white chocolate.
Red berries – Tart flavours win all the medals when paired with white chocolate! Put simply, the tart and sweet balance hits all the right notes and gets your mouth watering every time.
Pefect pairings for ruby chocolate
The famous 4th chocolate! Praised for its balance of sour and sweet notes, this chocolate has a naturally occurring red berry flavour and a smooth, milky finish. This means pairing flavours can be a little unusual, but as always we recommend getting stuck in and seeing what you can make.
Gingerbread – While we’re not strictly saying drizzle this over a gingerbread person (save us some if you do though), adding a speculoos flavour paste to your ruby dessert or some ginger and cinnamon oil drops to a ruby bar can add a kick of spice to your ruby red creation. Remember to add some beetroot powder if making a dessert to retain the ruby colour!
Tart notes – While it’s easy to overpower the natural taste of Ruby chocolate, adding flavours with a tart finish only enhances the sour berry notes already found in this chocolate. We personally love using a drop of Rhubarb flavour drops to give it that extra kick.
While we’ve only scratched the surface here, this hopefully gives you a nudge to start getting creative and try your own pairings. As always, we love to see what you create, so let us know what you’ve been up to! Or, if you need some extra help, don’t hesitate to get in touch and we’ll be happy to help.
If you’d like to learn more about flavour profiles, head over to part one, Flavour Profiles: How they work and their place in the world of chocolate.
Joe is a marketing executive, maker of baked goods and a Teesside accent so thick you could cut through it.
His favourite chocolate is Luker Nevado.