Over the weekend I popped into our local branch of Thorntons and had a nosey at the bars of chocolate to see what was new. There were a couple of summery sounding bars and in the block section of chocolate this interesting combination caught my eye. Again it sounds really quite fresh, and clearly part of the new spring stock. Chocolate has often been teamed up with lemon, and more recently salt, but this is the first time I‘ve seen both ingredients in one bar.
I slid open the blue box and carefully unwrapped the bar from its foil seal. The scent of the chocolate was quite mild, sweet but with just a vague hint of citrus. I snapped a piece off and let it melt carefully on my tongue. It seemed to be quite a soft chocolate when I broke it apart, and it melted quite quickly too. The milk chocolate is very smooth, and has a thick melt that coats the taste buds. The chocolate is very flavoursome, and soothing with the Costa Rican cocoa adding a rich taste almost like honey. The lemon was milder than expected, and the flavour comes from a lemon oil rather than the more sharp juice. The taste of the lemon is sweetened by the chocolate and seems fruity but mellow, it is consistent all the way through. The salt aspect proudly states that it is Cornish, but I have a funny feeling all salt tastes the same? Chemically at least salt is salt wherever it is from! Anyway the salt crystals aren’t evenly spread through the chocolate, but every cube I tried had a least some. I liked how the taste of the salt was uneven and that it meant that no piece of chocolate was consistent. Somehow it made you want to keep having another chunk of the chocolate so that you could replicate the pieces with the different levels of salt. The salty edge worked so well with the mellow sweet flavours adding a real zingy aspect to the bar and it was clean taste to mix with sweet chocolate. The lemon and the salt balance each other out really well.
Despite not being totally sure about a bar that mixes both lemon and salt, I can honestly tell you the combination is not just for fish! They have really pulled off a special chocolate bar, with a clever balance of flavours that keep you going back for another piece. I’m impressed that it worked so well, and loved both the flavour and the innovation.
By Cinabar
1 comment:
Please don't discontinue this limited edition of lemon & salt - it is fabulous!
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