MayHawk Insights 13

Emulsifier Use In Chocolate

“Design is nothing if not decision making.” — Henry Petroski

What Are Emulsifiers?

e·mul·si·fi·er noun · [C] · UK /ɪˈmʌl.sɪ.faɪ.ər/

A substance that creates or maintains an emulsion, commonly added to processed foods to stop particular components — such as oil and water — from separating out.

At its simplest, an emulsifier is something that helps two substances mix that don’t want to mix on their own. Oil and water are the classic example — two liquids that will always drift back apart unless a third substance is added to bridge the divide and hold them together.

That third substance works by attaching itself to both sides at once, gripping the oil with one part of its structure and the water with the other, so the mixture stays blended instead of separating back into layers.

This is not a food-specific idea, and it did not start as one. Emulsifiers are one of the most widely used classes of industrial chemical there is, doing largely the same job across entirely unrelated industries, most of them older than their use in food. They are far more common in daily life than most people realise. It is surprising just how many times in a single day a person comes into contact with one.

In paint manufacturing, emulsifiers keep pigment evenly dispersed through the liquid and stop it settling out, while also helping the paint flow more smoothly off a brush or roller. In cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, they are what allow a cream, lotion or ointment to combine oil-based and water-based ingredients into something that stays smooth in the tub rather than separating into a greasy layer and a watery one.

The oil industry uses them to separate water from crude oil during extraction and refining. Asphalt, adhesives, and household detergents all rely on the same underlying chemistry, most of it developed through nineteenth and early twentieth-century industrial soap and surfactant science before food manufacturers borrowed it for their own purposes.

Wherever an industry needs to combine substances that would rather stay apart, an emulsifier of some kind is usually doing the work quietly in the background.

And that includes the food industry. Mayonnaise and salad dressing depend on an emulsifier to keep oil suspended in vinegar or lemon juice rather than floating back to the top. Ice cream uses one to stop the fat and water content separating as it freezes and melts. Margarine, peanut butter, and most shop-bought bread rely on the same principle to stay smooth, spreadable, or soft for longer than they otherwise would.

Chocolate is one of food manufacturing’s oldest borrowings of this chemistry. It is not strictly an emulsion in the way mayonnaise or salad dressing is — there is very little water involved, and chocolate is better described as a suspension of extremely fine solid particles, such as cocoa solids and sugar, dispersed through liquid cocoa butter.

Yet many of the same physical principles still apply. The particles rub against one another as the chocolate flows, and lecithin reduces that friction by coating their surfaces. Although it is commonly described as an emulsifier in chocolate, its most important role here is really that of a surfactant and viscosity modifier, helping the chocolate move more freely during manufacture, reducing the friction between solid particles.

A small number of emulsifiers are specifically permitted for use in standardised chocolate under EU and UK law: lecithin (E322), ammonium phosphatides (E442), and polyglycerol polyricinoleate, or PGPR (E476). Each does a version of the same job, reducing the resistance of liquid chocolate so it flows, moulds, and coats more easily during manufacture, though they differ in cost, origin, and in how far each one can push that effect.

Lecithin As An Emulsifier

Lecithin is the most common emulsifier found in chocolate manufacturing, chiefly used as a viscosity modifier — a term for anything that changes how easily a liquid flows. It is a phospholipid, and a phospholipid has a genuinely two-faced structure — a hydrophilic head that is attracted to water, and a lipophilic tail that wants nothing to do with it and binds readily to fat instead. This is the emulsifier doing its job, bridging the divide.

That split personality is what makes it amphiphilic, and it is the entire reason it does anything at all in chocolate. Added at the grinding or conching stage, its molecules attach to the surface of every solid particle in the mix — sugar, milk powder, cocoa — coating them and cutting the friction between them. This is the surfactant side of lecithin, the property of most use to a chocolate maker.

In particular the sugar particles in chocolate are hydrophilic while also lyophobic, in other words they attract water but tend to repel fat, (cocoa butter or a substitute). For the solid particles suspended in liquid chocolate to pass each other smoothly the surfaces have to be coated in fat. So a third substance that forms a layer between the solid particles and fat greatly help this process. This can be an additive which acts more as surface active agent, rather than an emulsifier. Lecithin is able to bind itself strongly to sugar, and it is this phenomenon which makes it so effective in chocolate making.

In plain terms, imagine trying to pour wet sand out of a jar. It clumps and binds together, and it will not flow. Now imagine the same sand with the water removed, and every grain lightly coated in vegetable oil instead. It still weighs the same and it is still made of the same sand, but now it pours. It is lubricated. That is what lecithin does to chocolate, it coats every particle at the microscopic scale.

The amount needed to achieve this is strikingly small. A standard batch uses only 0.3 to 0.5 per cent lecithin by weight — a few grams for every kilogram of chocolate. Added at the grinding or conching stages — in Industrial chocolate lecithin is preferably added when the chocolate contains less water and it isn’t being forced into the cocoa particles. Above 0.5% and too much lecithin can be detrimental to flow properties. That is the scale worth holding in mind throughout this Insight: a fraction of a per cent, doing all of the work described above. This is the amount, but we also need to ask, what is the question it is answering?

The traditional way of achieving less viscosity in chocolate making was by adding extra cocoa butter to the chocolate. This achieves the same reduction in viscosity by a different mechanism, thinning the liquid chocolate, whilst retaining the same natural biological cocoa bean source material. A lecithin, soy or sunflower, cannot do the structural work cocoa butter does, because it was never built to. It has no polymorphism of its own to offer. It does not crystallise into Form V. What it changes is friction, not structure. A change in friction, at a fraction of the cost.

Most food-grade lecithin used in chocolate comes from soy, sometimes from sunflower, extracted industrially rather than occurring naturally in the bean. Sunflower lecithin has gained ground over the past decade as the “cleaner” option — its extraction, cold or expeller pressing followed by water degumming, is mechanically simpler, and importantly avoids the soy allergen declaration.

Valrhona itself moved from soy to sunflower lecithin after decades of using soy, and now states it plainly on the label. The switch changes what is declared on the packet. It changes nothing about what the molecule does once it is in the chocolate.

The Use of Emulsifiers in Industrial Chocolate

The instinct is to assume lecithin entered chocolate purely as a cost-cutting shortcut, chased by manufacturers looking to use less cocoa butter. That instinct is only half right, and the earlier half of the story is more interesting than the cost argument.

Vegetable lecithin was first patented for food use in 1907, by a German scientist named H. C. Buer. It took until 1921 for it to become commercially practical, when a Hamburg factory owner named Hermann Bollmann worked out how to extract it from soybeans cheaply and at volume.

In 1925 Bollmann brought the process to Britain and patented it specifically for chocolate manufacture. Commercial lecithin reached America by 1929. A US patent followed in 1930, held by the American Lecithin Company, licensing German-originated technology to the American confectionery trade.

What that 1930 patent actually claimed is worth reading closely, because it is not what most people assume. The stated problem it solved was “graying,” or bloom — the same pale mottling that untempered cocoa butter produces when its crystals drift out of Form V.

Adding a small amount of lecithin, the patent argued, made that instability less likely, alongside two secondary effects: it reduced the amount of cocoa butter needed, and it improved the chocolate’s flow when melted for enrobing confectionery. Stability came first in the patent’s own language. Cost saving and viscosity were named as bonuses, not the headline.

By 1939 the patent was significant enough to be fought over in a US federal appeals court, which is a reasonable proxy for how quickly and how widely the practice had spread through the American confectionery industry within a single decade.

A niche German patent in 1907, a workable extraction process by 1921, a chocolate-specific patent in Britain by 1925, and by the time it reached American courts in 1939, lecithin in chocolate was no longer a novelty. It was standard practice.

The Arithmetic That Makes the Case

Whatever justified it first, cost is what has kept it there for a century.

A small amount of lecithin is a very effective viscosity modifier. Food-grade sunflower lecithin costs in the region of £7.50 a kilogram. A standard batch needs only 3 to 5 grams of it per kilogram of chocolate — 0.3 to 0.5 per cent — which works out at two or three pence worth.

Cocoa butter, by comparison, runs £10 to £20 a kilogram wholesale, and getting the same viscosity reduction from cocoa butter alone typically needs an extra 10 per cent added to the batch — around £1.50 worth.

Three pence against one pound fifty. At scale, with margins already thin, that arithmetic is not really a chocolate-making decision.

Using Lecithins Isn’t a Food Safety or Health Argument

At the concentrations used in chocolate, food-grade lecithin, E322, is unambiguously safe to eat. The FDA lists it as Generally Recognised as Safe. The EFSA has reviewed it and found no safety concern at current authorised use levels.

Soya lecithin carries a mandatory allergen declaration and sunflower lecithin does not — that is the only meaningful safety distinction between the two, not a reason to doubt either of them.

What isn’t yet fully understood is the longer-term effect of routine phospholipid intake on the gut microbiome. That is an open research question, not a cause for concern.

None of this is the point of this Insight. The question was never whether lecithin is safe.

Why Lindt Uses Lecithin in Some Bars and Not Others

Lindt is a useful case study because it does not use lecithin uniformly, and the pattern is not arbitrary. By the company’s own published ingredient data, at the time of writing, its regular dark, milk and white chocolate lines all contain soya lecithin. The Excellence range at 70 per cent cocoa and above — up through 85, 90, 99 and 100 per cent — does not.

Viscosity is a fat-to-solids problem. Milk and white chocolate carry milk powder and milk fat, which add bulk without adding fluidity. This is where lecithin’s surfactant properties are used.

A bar at 70 per cent cocoa and above contains far more cocoa butter relative to everything else in the recipe. A cocoa bean itself is roughly 54 per cent fat, as cocoa butter, so a chocolate made from little more than beans and sugar is naturally lower in viscosity to begin with. Where there is enough cocoa butter, lecithin has nothing to do. Where there is not, it earns its place on the label as a viscosity modifier, replacing the need for more expensive cocoa butter.

Edge Case Questions in Craft Chocolate

Industrial chocolate made up its mind on emulsifier use over 100 years ago. Now the new sector of craft chocolate is starting to slowly introduce it too. There are real reasons a serious Bean-to-Bar chocolate maker might reach for lecithin, and they deserve naming rather than dismissal. Also, there are pages on other websites, under the banner of craft chocolate, that explain why these companies use an emulsifier.

Yet, this Insight isn’t written from a theoretical standpoint. MayHawk is a bean-to-bar chocolate maker, and our decision not to use emulsifiers has a real impact. You only have to see the production line on certain types of chocolate we make. Our Milk Chocolate in particular has problems with viscosity, which means we have to carefully manage the batch run. The recipe we created is specifically designed for more milk and less sugar, which means more particles in suspension and less natural lubrication, and you can see how thick it is at the grinding, conching, and tempering and moulding stages. Adding sunflower lecithin would certainly make a real difference to the way we work, thinning the chocolate considerably.

Chocolate makers who choose to use an emulsifier might have other reasons beyond viscosity. They might be committed to staying strictly single-origin and have no cocoa butter from the same source available to correct a bean that runs low in natural fat. Diluting recipes with cocoa butter could also be of concern, keeping a more intense cocoa flavour without it.

Where viscosity is an issue, a craft chocolate maker might be trying to scale up production, piping chocolate through fixed production lines rather than hand-pouring it. This new setup might be causing problems, and they need a lower viscosity in their chocolate simply to stop the pipework and pumps from clogging or under-performing.

Deodorised cocoa butter is itself a lightly processed ingredient — someone could fairly ask why a trace of lecithin counts as more of a compromise than a refined fat does. High-end European couverture uses it for chocolatier work. Why not craft bean-to-bar products?

Each is a fair question from people who have thought about it. And there are others. But the case for lecithin ignores a few inconvenient truths. Isn’t there another way? A line can run slower, or the chocolate can be warmed rather than thinned chemically. Longer and more precise conching can replicate better viscosity without using E322 additives. And other, case-specific, solutions can be applied.

Deodorised cocoa butter, whatever its own light processing, still carries the triacylglycerol structure that gives Form V its properties — a connection to chocolate lecithin will never have. Insight 10 goes into more detail looking at the structure of cocoa butter. And ‘couverture does it’ answers a question about what is common in a different industry sector, not what is necessary in a bean-to-bar operation controlling every stage of production.

Reducing reliance on cocoa butter, especially in service of scaling output, is rarely a craft decision. It’s normally an economic one at industrial scale, and a question of supply meeting rising demand in craft chocolate — a legitimate reason to consider using lecithins. But engineering, used properly, with correct intent, can actually solve these problems. Design, as the quote at the start of this Insight puts it, is nothing if not decision making. The question worth asking is which decision is actually being made. Engineering should solve manufacturing challenges before ingredients are asked to.

Pushback on this viewpoint of looking for other solutions to emulsifiers in chocolate making is understandable. This Insight isn’t looking into every company’s individual decisions, or the specific questions that prompted their use of lecithin. And that is a genuine criticism of this Insight. Industrial chocolate is a separate sector, while craft chocolate, as a category, has never rested on the presence or absence of one additive alone — other, more foundational pillars matter more.

For MayHawk, when making our milk chocolate, patience, concentration, and careful conching are our way of working around the problem. Correcting the recipe at the early development stage, by slightly increasing the amount of cocoa butter used, was the other part of the solution. This is the way we choose to work — it is not a definitive solution for all companies. Each company makes the internal decisions that are correct for it, and many good reasons not covered here will be a factor in that choice. For MayHawk, we ask: Is it necessary to coat every particle in our chocolate with E322, an industrially processed food additive?

As an aside: one of the hidden problems of craft chocolate makers increasingly using emulsifiers is covered in Insight 12, where the correct use of ingredient labelling, and complying with national regulations, should be professionally dealt with.

Scaling A Company In A Different Way

Within the craft chocolate industry, increasing production scale, and the attractive pull of lecithin, is rarely the real constraint some companies assume or even claim it to be. The real constraint is how much friction, cost, and precision a maker is willing to absorb rather than pass on to the ingredient list by adding an emulsifier to it.

Amedei, founded in Tuscany, produces entirely bean-to-bar, lecithin-free chocolate and couverture at real, meaningful commercial scale — including Porcelana, among the most expensive bars in the world, exported to more than forty countries. They make world-class chocolate, sold at volume, at international wholesale prices, produced through the slow processing methods the company is open about, and it remains a trusted brand with a clear, consistent identity behind what it makes.

Dandelion Chocolate, in San Francisco, is a growing international presence, making chocolate from just two ingredients — cocoa beans and cane sugar — as it has done since its founding in 2010. It has quietly scaled up over the years since, moving into a larger, purpose-built factory in San Francisco and opening cafés and production sites in Japan, including Tokyo and Kamakura.

At MayHawk we take a similar view to scaling the company. Just one of the things on the company roadmap is when MayHawk’s own scale and finances allow it, in-house cocoa butter pressing is a path we want to take — as this is no longer a difficult proposition to run at a small scale. Among other reasons, in-house pressed cocoa butter will match the single-origin source of the bean-to-bar chocolate we make. We have always believed in stripping chocolate back to the essentials, and we believe a food additive like an emulsifier is not necessary to get there.

The realities facing craft chocolate makers: Emulsifier use in chocolate dates back over 100 years, the amounts needed in chocolate to work as an effective viscosity modifier is less than 0.5%, and it makes it easier and cheaper to produce chocolate in volume. What solutions, to what problems, is an emulsifier providing? These are the questions that a craft chocolate maker will ask — and also, what are we giving up by using it? The answers are important, and for each craft chocolate company they need to be respected.

TLDR: Emulsifiers (E322) only ever change the friction of chocolate, although lecithin started out life as an anti-bloom agent, and the economics of using them are stark: pence against pounds. Yet craft chocolate has never been defined by using one additive alone, and this Insight doesn’t claim otherwise. Adding extra cocoa butter, to thin chocolate, is not a foreign additive — it is the part of the cocoa bean. Questions of how a company scales without relying on emulsifiers can be explored in successful case studies. At MayHawk we believe emulsifiers are not essential on the path we choose to take. Insight 12 goes into more detail on some of these issues.

Conner. 28th July 2026

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