Chocolate Candy
Fry & Sons invented the first chocolate bar in 1847. Since then, more and more varieties have found their way onto store shelves. There are so many, it can be hard to choose a favorite! A recent survey found that American’s most favorite flavor is chocolate, with 52% of adults in the United States saying that it is the flavor they like the best.
Since it wasn’t until 1875 that milk chocolate was invented, the first chocolate bars were made using bittersweet chocolate. Philadelphia, New York, and Boston were the first areas to begin producing candy bars. The industry boomed and, with shipping allowing for corn syrup, sugar, and milk to be more accessible, it quickly spread from the eastern seaboard to the Midwest. Chicago eventually became a candy bar mecca of sorts, and remains an important locale even today.
Even the U.S. military had a hand in the popularity of chocolate candy. When World War I began, so did the demand for chocolate bars. American chocolate makers were commissioned by the United States Army Quartermaster Corps to provide blocks of chocolate, weighing 20 to 40 pounds, to be shipped to their bases for distribution to soldiers. As soldiers came back home, there affinity to chocolate candy remained and with the rising demand from civilians, manufacturers of chocolate bars in the U.S. started producing tens of thousands of varieties.
Many of the familiar bars we know today were introduced in the early part of the 1900s, including Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Hershey’s Milk Chocolate, Snickers, Butterfinger, Kit Kat, 3 Musketeers, M&M’s, Nestlé’s Crunch, and Milky Way, just to name a few.
Why is chocolate such a popular treat? It could be because it goes so well with other ingredients, such as caramel, nuts, wafers, fruit, toffee, and nougat. It is no surprise that chocolate is still quite popular today and remains popular with the U.S. Army and has even treated astronauts in space.