First Chocolate For Eating

The inventor of 'chocolate for eating' is unknown, but in 1847, Fry & Sons of Bristol, which merged with Cadbury Limited in 1919, sold a 'chocolate delicieux a manger'. Many people credit this as the very first chocolate bar for eating. John Cadbury added a similar product to his range in 1849, and by today's standards these original chocolate bars would not be considered very palatable.
 
The introduction from Holland of the van Houten cocoa press to the Cadbury Brothers Bridge Street factory in 1866 was the real breakthrough, not only for the Cadbury business, but also for the development of eating chocolate.

Cocoa butter, extracted from the cocoa beans, is the essential ingredient for eating chocolate. The Cadbury Brothers developed a new eating chocolate recipe, which produced chocolate quite similar to that which we now enjoy.

At that time only plain dark chocolate could be made: this refined chocolate was used for moulding into blocks and bars or for covering fruit-flavoured centres, to make the first chocolate assortments.
 
In 1875, a Swiss manufacturer, Daniel Peters of Vevey, produced the first milk chocolate bar using powdered milk. The idea of combining chocolate and milk wasn't entirely new, as the Cadbury Brothers had sold a milk chocolate drink between 1849 and 1875 from the original recipe by Sir Hans Sloane.
 
Milk chocolate bars were made by Cadbury Brothers in 1897. It was a very coarse, dry eating chocolate, made by blending milk powder with the basic chocolate ingredients of cocoa butter, cocoa mass and sugar.

By this time Daniel Peters had perfected his recipe and was now using condensed milk rather than powdered milk to produce a chocolate with a superior taste and texture. Swiss milk chocolate dominated the British market - a situation the Cadbury family set out to challenge.