Many plain chocolate bars now come with announcements about their chocolate percentage. "60% cacao," they proudly announce, or 70%, or 85%, at which point you should probably save it for baking. There's a widespread belief that a higher percentage of cacao is healthier and also better quality.
While this certainly can be true -- we're not going to eat those 10% chocolates -- there are other factors involved.
First, the percentage refers to the combined totals of the two substances we use from cacao: cocoa solids, or cocoa liquor or powder, and cocoa butter.
Cocoa butter has no particular flavor. It's a fat, like dairy butter, but it has some special properties. Chief among these, from the point of view of eating chocolate, is the fact that it's solid at room temperature but melts at body heat. That's why chocolate melts in your mouth so nicely. It's also mostly oleic acid and stearic acid, so it doesn't have the negative health effects of dairy butter. It contains antioxidants, so it doesn't turn rancid. Nice stuff, as butters go.
Cocoa powder is the antioxidant power house. But the percentage on the package doesn't tell you how much of the chocolate is cocoa and how much is cocoa butter.
Beyond that, there are often other ingredients in chocolate confections. A bar of seemingly solid chocolate with a low percentage of cacao is likely to have a high proportion of sugar and cheaper, less healthy fats. But chocolate may contain milk, fruit, nuts, feuilletine, and other wholesome things as well. The percentage of cacao will be lower, but the quality needn't be.
Our Sweetique Chocolate Easter Eggs, for example, contain hazelnuts blended into a special mixture of premium chocolates. The percentage of cacao isn't relevant in cases like these. Taste and mouthfeel are the criteria to use when judging the quality of chocolate treats of this kind.
