Did there used to be dark chocolate and plain chocolate as different things?

[KatyMac]

Did they taste different?

The chocolate on Fry's chocolate cream and, say, Bournville?

Am I misremembering

Possibly did.
Milk chocolate is different depending on brand (ie Cadbury tastes different to Galaxy).
I've never really liked Bournville - i find it bitter. But I love Frys chocolate (the creams).

no, I think dark chocolate was often called plain chocolate. Different types of plain / dark chocolate would have tasted different, same as different milk chocolate brands have different tastes.

My kids hadn’t heard the term until we mentioned it recently, but after thinking about it, they declared that “plain” chocolate ought to refer to milk chocolate, since it’s the “normal” aka “plain” type. But what do they know!

I always thought that plain chocolate was the same as dark chocolate and I’ve used the terms interchangeably. I sort of associate plain chocolate with baking and dark chocolate with eating, but that could just be me. Happy to be corrected on this though.

No, plain chocolate was just what people often used to call dark chocolate.

Dark and plain are the same. Sometimes even called bitter chocolate.

Different brands will have tasted different.

Bourneville was the only dark chocolate bar in the 70s, though there used to be one with orange and nut pieces in the 80s.

Chocolate was very basic.

I agree!

Bournville always used to have a fairly low cocoa content, when compared to modern dark chocolate which tends to be 70/80 or even 90%. I think Bournville was around 40/50%.

From a baking perspective dark chocolate was (and continues) to be available as unsweetened and semi sweet, both in dark and milk. Different brands have different “flavour”.

Dark and plain are the same thing, what changes is the cocoa content and where the cocoa was farmed, location changes flavour!

Looking at some vintage pictures Bournville is described as "Plain Chocolate" (actually "Plain Flavour" 🙂)
Black Magic (made by Rowntree) are described as "Dark Chocolates".
(pictures incoming....)

Black Magic? (And in the 60s, for that matter).

Boxes of chocolates, yes. Possibly chocolate coated nuts? But bars of chocolate, like dairy milk, not really.

Plain chocolate Bounty! Yum.

60's - 70's, the favourite in our house was Terrys All Gold. They were plain. Ooh, and Neapolitans, they had a whole variety of flavours in there, including plain. Also Frys Peppermint Cream, I think that was plain chocolate too.

We just called it plain chocolate and everybody knew what that meant.

Me? A chocoholic? No...........

This has made me wonder if ‘cooking chocolate’ is still a thing…apparently it is (Tesco have it). Even better it doesn’t appear to have palm oil in it so may be nicer to snack on than most actual ‘eating’ chocolate available these days

Some of us still do!

The ‘cooking chocolate’ I remember wasn’t nice to eat - I think the fats may have been different to help the melting and texture but you wouldn’t want more than a thin coating of it.

I think dark was for eating and plain was for cooking.

70's Black Magic, yum but then again any Rowntrees was far better than awful gross nestle

I think Plain is what we used to call Dark, but it wasn't as sophisticated as modern Dark chocolate in the same way as Dairy Milk isn't like Lindt or Milk Chocolate from Hotel Choc

That is what I think too

There was bounty, toffee crisp, occasional runs of mars/snickers/milky way as dark chocolate
Frys did 2 types of 5 centres, milk and dark
Mintola was dark

Trying to remember what else was dark

Terry's chocolates plus a dark orange

Grandparents had a sweetie shop so we had access to lindt, anton berg, Elizabeth shaw (I mean we also had those bloody seashells and ferro rocher when they were still 'posh')

We had boxes of dark choc ginger, brazils, mqrzipans, rose/violet/peppermint/coffee creams to be weighed out & jars of dark chocolate raisins and peanuts

Struggling to remember - but I get hung up of the difference between plain and dark, still think there was a difference

Yes I remember stealing some as a child while my mum made whatever she was making and being sorely disappointed at the taste

I remember this, too. We referred to Bourneville as plain but anything that was 75% cocoa or more, like Lindt, would be 'dark'.

I thought Mum was amazingly sophisticated because she liked Bournville chocolate and Black Magic chocolates. (“Who knows the secrets of the Black Magic Box?”). I still love Fry’s Peppermint Cream and who else remembers the Mixed Fruit one with different flavoured fondant in each bite.

Cooking Chocolate was rubbish though, all fat and no flavour.

I've just been eating Bournville lately, they have new buttons out. I noticed the back of the pack says min 35% cocoa solids... that's not high at all , did it used to be more?