I’ve had a variety of chocolates in my life, many flavored with things like rum, cherry, raspberry, orange, or mint. At this year’s Fancy Food Show in New York City I tried some chocolates flavored in ways that are new to me and maybe to you as well. In a previous post I wrote about sea salt flavored chocolates. In this post I’d like to talk about chocolates flavored with spices not typically associated with chocolates or even other types of sweets or confections.

I had some chocolates flavored with things like lilac and thyme. Now when I think of thyme I normally think of a pasta dish or maybe a roasted meat. I don’t think of sweets. The taste experience is different from the sea salt chocolate in that it is a very mild sensation. Not only can you taste the thyme you can smell it In fact the thyme fragrance overpowers the smell of the chocolate.. However, the lilac flavored chocolates had almost no discernible difference in taste when compared to similar chocolates (i. e. other dark or milk chocolates). However, the aroma was intense. The closest I can come to describing the experience is to imagine yourself sitting in the middle of several lilac bushes on a hot day. The lilac perfumes every breath you take. Now put a piece of dark chocolate in your mouth. As the chocolate melts in your mouth take deep breathes through your nose so you can smell the lilac and taste the chocolate at the same time. That is what it was like for me.

I like the smell of lilac and I enjoy thyme in a variety of dishes. The combination of thyme and chocolate or lilac and chocolate is not impressive enough, for me that is, to skip the more traditional raspberry, orange, or mint flavors. Don’t take my word for it. Go try some!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.