Trinitario, Criollo or Forastero? A Data Analyst’s way of discovering the Best Chocolate Bar
Which chocolate should you try next? Chocolate decision-making supported with data, Pandas, Seaborn and Matplotlib.
Can’t decide on which chocolate bar to eat? Tempted to try every chocolate bar like there is no tomorrow? Well, today is your lucky day! We’ll help you with making that very important decision. But first —
Happy World Chocolate Day!!
Commemorated on 7th of July, World Chocolate Day is about celebrating self-indulgence and learning more about the cacao beans that go into making the best chocolate bars around the world. Let us help you make that choice!
World Chocolate Day is said to celebrate the introduction of chocolate in Europe in 1550. Once cacao beans made their way over to Europe they were still used as a drink flavored with sugar and cinnamon.
The very first solid chocolate bar, known as “Dutch cocoa” was created in 1847 in Britain by Joseph Fry. This magical treat came into existence by pressing a mixture of melted cacao butter and sugar into a solid shape.
Are you too confused about cacao and cocoa?
The word ‘cocoa’ is adapted from the word ‘cacao’. Cacao beans refer to those which are not roasted or raw beans while cocoa beans are processed or roasted ones.
It wasn’t until 1875 that the world was introduced to the milk chocolate bar by a Swiss chocolatier called Daniel Peter who invented milk chocolate by mixing powdered milk developed by Henri Nestlé with the liquor.This partnership became the basis of the Nestlé Company.
So are you ready for some serious chocolaty bar-charts and box-plots?
About the Dataset
Chocolate Bar Ratings dataset from Kaggle contains expert ratings of chocolate conducted between 2006 and 2017, with more than 1700 individual chocolate bars, along with information on their regional origin, the percentage of cocoa contained in each bar, and the variety of chocolate beans used during the production of each bar. 416 companies from 60 different countries in the world participated in this chocolate rating study.
A Sneak-peek into Chocolate Bar Ratings
Are you wondering which country to visit for some amazing chocolate bar? Well, worry not. Here are the top Chocolate Producing Countries in the World:
The following rating represents an experience with a single bar:
- 5.0 = Elite (Transcending beyond the ordinary limits)
- 4.0 = Premium (Superior flavor development, character and style)
- 3.0 = Satisfactory(3.0) to praiseworthy(3.75) (well made with special qualities)
- 2.0 = Disappointing (Passable but contains at least one significant flaw)
- 1.0 = Unpleasant (mostly unpalatable)
The quality of flavor, texture, and aftermelt is influenced by bean type and origin, cocoa percentage, and the secret craft of the producers. So what’s the average rating of chocolate in different countries and companies?
Imagine the view on the left with the Chocolates on the right…
Now, you’re one step ahead for your next world travel plan. Thank us later!
So, since you already know which countries to choose from, you should also know which company to choose from. Here is a bar-chart for your perusal.
Cocoa Percentage in Chocolate Bars
The median cocoa percentage chocolate producers go for is 70%, with the majority of chocolate bars in this study falling in the range of 65% and 82%. The correlation between cocoa percentage and rating shows as negative of -0.16. In other words, the higher the cocoa percentage the lower the rating, and vice versa.
The average cocoa percentage over the years has been seeing highs and lows. Interestingly, the year 2008 had the highest average cocoa percentage and at the same time the lowest average rating recorded. Over the years, however, the average rating has seen an increasing trend.
Looking at the distribution of cocoa percentage and the accompanied rating, we can see that the rating in the range from 4.0 to 5.0 is missing. We can also see that the chocolates made of +90% of cocoa do not reach the rating above 3.5 from the experts’ point of view.
The Bean Type Case-Study
The most popular cacao bean types are Trinitario, Criollo, Forastero which makes up almost 50% of our dataset. Almost 23.5% of the chocolate bars in our data is Trinitario, 10.8% is Forastero and 9.5% is Criollo. A blend of either of the three makes up 5.4 % , which is also highly appreciated.
While Forastero looks to be the most used cacao bean, the best median rating belongs to the blended ones. Trinitario and the blended version of either of these even has full points, that is, a whopping 5 star rating!
Six out top ten countries where you can get Trinitario cacao based chocolate bars are in Europe.; Scotland, Belgium and Swiss Chocolate Bars are the best rated Trinitario chocolate bars who made it the top five. Singapore is highest rated country to produce quality chocolate bars using Trinitario cacao.
Let’s remind you of the awesome Singapore skyline!
The blends are best made in Italy, followed by Belgium and Canada. There are only 11 countries in our data that use a blend of either of these three cacao beans and eight out of these are European countries. So if you in Europe, it’s time to backpack to Italy, Belgium and Switzerland and explore the best chocolate with a majestic view like this! Yummmm!
Let’s go to Ireland!
Well as three data professionals residing in Ireland, we are a little interested in the statistics in here.
In this study Ireland participated in 2013 with one chocolate producer, namely Wilike’s Organic. Wilkie’s Organic chocolate that entered the rating was made of Criollo chocolate beans with origins from Peru, with 75% and 89% of cocoa. The highest rating of Wilkie’s organic was 3.25 for Tumbes specific origin (which qualifies for satisfactory category) and 75% cocoa, where Amazonas made of 89% cocoa with a rating of 2.75.
Which one is “The One”?
So you must be asking by now which one is the one you absolutely need to try, THE best one!
Good news, it’s two of them that actually share the first place! So we get to try more chocolate! Italian Amedei Toscano Black of Trinitario bean type, and same producer, Amedei Chuao blended type are the two 5-star chocolates of this study, both made of 70% cocoa!
Remember, 9 out of 10 people say they love chocolate. So don’t try to make everyone happy, there will always be that 1 person around who doesn’t like chocolate.
Contributors
Nabanita Roy is a Data Scientist at Fiserv based in Nenagh, Ireland. She is currently leading Women in AI Ireland’s AI & Data group projects. She also a freelance blogger on Medium. You can follow her here.
Iva Simon Bubalo is a Data Reporting Analyst at Accenture Dublin. Iva holds a Master’s degree in Philosophy and Language studies from 2018, and an HDip in Science in Data Analytics from National College of Ireland from 2019.
Luciana Azubuike recently completed a MSc in Artificial Intelligence and graduated from Cork Institute of Technology in 2020. Luciana is an IT Support Developer at Clearstream, working on the automation of enhanced user experience.
Women in AI (WAI) is a nonprofit org on a mission to increase female representation and participation in AI. First global community of women in AI with 90+ countries and 28 ambassadors, WAI is working to embrace diversity, empower, inspire and educate next generations.
Find out more about the Irish Chapter of Women in AI on Linkedin.
