Cocoa Butter

Cocoa butter, also called theobroma oil, is a pale yellow, edible fat extracted from the cocoa bean, Theobroma cacao, with a cocoa flavor and aroma and a melting point just below human body temperature; it contains no animal products. It is produced by fermenting and drying cocoa beans, roasting and removing the hulls to make cocoa nibs, of which 54 to 58 percent is cocoa butter, then grinding the nibs into cocoa mass and pressing it to separate the butter from the non-fat solids; its main fatty acids are stearic acid at 34.5 percent, oleic acid at 34.5 percent and palmitic acid at 26 percent. It is a major ingredient in nearly all chocolate, especially white, milk and couverture chocolate, and is also used in pharmaceutical suppositories for its nontoxic, body-temperature melting properties and in cosmetics for its texture and emollient qualities. Cocoa use dates back to the Aztecs and Mayans; early producers boiled cocoa mass and skimmed off the separated fat, a method later replaced by hydraulic presses in the 18th century and Van Houten presses in the 19th.