Dark, Milk, White, Ruby: The Types of Chocolate Explained
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What all chocolate has in common
All four types are built on cocoa butter, the natural fat of the cocoa bean, plus sugar. What changes from type to type is what goes in with them. Dark chocolate adds the brown, fat-free part of the bean, usually counted with the fat as cocoa solids. Milk chocolate adds that and milk solids. White chocolate keeps the cocoa butter and the milk and leaves the brown part out entirely.
After mixing, the paste is refined and conched, steps covered in how chocolate is made. Because the fat is cocoa butter, dark, milk and white chocolate all need tempering to set glossy and snap cleanly. We explain why in what tempering is and why it matters.
Swap the cocoa butter for another vegetable fat and you no longer have chocolate in the legal sense. You have compound chocolate, a different product that we compare side by side in real vs compound chocolate.
Dark chocolate
Dark chocolate is chocolate made from cocoa mass, cocoa butter and sugar, with little or no milk. The word “dark” isn’t a legal name in the EU or the US. Under the EU’s Directive 2000/36/EC it’s simply “chocolate”, which needs at least 35% total dry cocoa solids. The full set of minimums, with the cocoa butter split, is in the table in real vs compound chocolate. Codex mentions “dark chocolate” only as a name some regions use for plain chocolate.
So the word on the wrapper tells you the style. The number next to it tells you more.
What the percentage on the wrapper means
The cocoa percentage is the minimum share of the chocolate that comes from the cocoa bean, counting cocoa butter and the fat-free cocoa solids together, on a dry basis. Sugar isn’t part of it. In the EU, chocolate and milk chocolate must state it on the label in the form “cocoa solids: …% minimum”, and the figure is worked out after deducting other added ingredients such as nuts, under Article 3(3) and Annex I, Part C of the directive. On a hazelnut bar, the percentage describes the chocolate, not the nuts.
White chocolate is left out of that EU rule, so don’t expect a cocoa percentage on it.
The US chocolate standards in 21 CFR Part 163 don’t require a percentage at all. They set their minimums in “chocolate liquor”, calculated in a different way, so a US minimum and a European percentage can’t be compared directly.
The percentage also doesn’t say what the rest of the bar is. For that, read the ingredient list. On a bar that lists only cocoa ingredients and sugar, plus perhaps an emulsifier or vanilla, the rest is mostly sugar. Once milk powder, vegetable fat or nuts appear, that no longer holds.
Does a higher percentage taste more bitter? Usually, but less reliably than the wrapper suggests. Cocoa polyphenols are a main source of bitterness and astringency. In a 2018 study of dark bars by Oberrauter and colleagues, the blends that didn’t name an origin got more bitter as the cocoa content went up, and those at 54.5 to 60% were dominated by sweetness. In bars from a single origin, though, the percentage had little or no effect, and the bean variety and growing conditions mattered more.
A 2023 study by Wagner and colleagues, with untrained tasters and commercial bars, found what most of us would guess. Bitterness stood out most in the 85% sample and sweetness in the 36% sample, and the 70% and 36% bars were the best liked. The 85% came last. To compare bars yourself, see how to taste chocolate like a professional.
If you came here to find out whether dark chocolate is better for you, that’s a separate question with its own evidence, and it isn’t covered here.
Bittersweet and semisweet (US labels)
In the US, bittersweet and semisweet are the legal names for dark chocolate, and the law doesn’t tell them apart. Under 21 CFR 163.123, both must contain at least 35% chocolate liquor, calculated the same way. So one maker’s semisweet can be darker than another’s bittersweet. If the maker prints a percentage, that tells you more than the name.
Milk chocolate
Milk chocolate is chocolate with milk solids added. The milk can go in as milk powder, whole milk powder or milk crumb, depending on the maker. In the EU it needs at least 25% total dry cocoa solids, and it carries the same “cocoa solids: …% minimum” statement as dark chocolate. The milk solids minimums, and the US figures in chocolate liquor, are in the comparison table in real vs compound chocolate.
The milk does more than soften the cocoa. In a 2021 study of milk chocolate made with milk crumb by Samfaß and colleagues, milk fat brought a series of lactones, and one of them noticeably strengthened the creamy flavor people perceive when they eat it. How the milk powder is made matters too, as the white chocolate section shows.
White chocolate: does it count?
Yes. White chocolate has its own legal definition in the EU, in the US and in the Codex standard, so in law it’s chocolate. It’s made from cocoa butter, milk and sugar, without the brown, fat-free cocoa solids.
The EU requires at least 20% cocoa butter and 14% dry milk solids. The US set a standard for white chocolate in 2002 with the same 20% and 14% minimums, a cap of 55% sweetener, and one rule you won’t find for other types: under 21 CFR 163.124 it “shall be free of coloring material.”
The name is protected. A product that replaces the cocoa butter with another fat can’t be sold as white chocolate and ends up with a name like “white coating”. In the EU there’s one wrinkle: white chocolate may include up to 5% of certain approved vegetable fats, as long as the label says so. That’s covered in real vs compound chocolate.
The milk powder shapes the flavor more than you might expect. In a 2017 lab study by Stewart and colleagues, a model white chocolate made with skim milk powder that had been heated harder during production tasted more of caramel and fudge, and an expert panel found more fudge and condensed milk flavor. The researchers linked the change to compounds formed in the Maillard reaction. That was a model white chocolate, not a survey of bars on the shelf, but it explains why two white chocolates can taste so different.
Ruby chocolate: what is known and what is not
Ruby chocolate is a pink chocolate with no added coloring, introduced in 2017 and marketed by the company that developed it as a fourth type alongside dark, milk and white, as Tuenter and colleagues noted in 2021. What it’s made of is on public record. Exactly how it turns pink is not.
What it’s made of
The clearest description comes from the US Food and Drug Administration. Its permit, published as 84 FR 64541 on November 22, 2019, defines ruby as cocoa butter mixed and ground with cocoa ingredients, citric acid, dairy ingredients and sweeteners, and says it “contains no added coloring.” The permit’s conditions include at least 1.5% nonfat cacao solids, 20% cacao fat and 12% total milk solids. That small share of fat-free cocoa solids is what separates it from white chocolate on paper. The permit also says other ingredients can’t imitate the flavor of chocolate, milk or butter, berry or another fruit.
A 2024 study of four bars from a single maker by Zarić and colleagues gives a sense of scale: cocoa content was 28% in the white, 33% in the milk, 47% in the ruby and 70% in the dark. Those are four products from one company, and they don’t define ruby in general.
The pink color
An EU regulation from 2020 describes how the pink can happen. Under Regulation (EU) 2020/351, when citric acid is used in cocoa mass high in polyphenols, it lowers the pH and reacts with some of them, turning the cocoa mass “characteristic pink shades accompanied by a berry-fruit sour taste”, and both survive into the finished chocolate. The regulation never uses the word “ruby” or names the company that applied. Its description still matches ruby on three points: pink shades, a berry-like sourness and the same ingredient, citric acid, that appears in the US permit.
A patent first filed by the producer in 2008, US 8,460,739 B2, describes making red or purple cocoa material by treating cocoa nibs with acid, using beans with more polyphenols than fermented beans, preferably unfermented. The patent doesn’t mention ruby either, and we found no statement from the company confirming that this is how ruby is made.
Where it stands legally
In the US, ruby is sold under a temporary market-test permit, not a standard of identity. FDA issued the permit on November 22, 2019, because the product “deviates from the current standards of identity for chocolate products in terms of its final composition, taste, and color.” In 2021, FDA extended the permit (86 FR 49548) while the company gathers data for a petition to create a standard for ruby, and invited other firms to join the test. The extension runs until FDA either sets that standard or denies the petition. As of October 11, 2026, the federal chocolate standards still had no standard for ruby.
You may read that FDA “recognized” ruby as a fourth type of chocolate. The documents say something narrower: it allowed ruby to be sold while the market test runs.
The EU chocolate directive has no ruby category. The 2020 regulation raised the limit for citric acid in milk chocolate only, and states that the product it describes “would therefore comply with the definition of milk chocolate”. So in the EU, ruby sits within the milk chocolate rules rather than in a category of its own. The 2003 Codex text has no ruby category either.
What the law requires in the EU, US and under Codex
Milk and white chocolate have legal definitions with minimum cocoa and milk content in the EU, the US and under Codex, and dark chocolate falls under the rules for plain chocolate. Ruby has no definition of its own in any of the three. “Dark” isn’t a legal name in the EU or the US; it travels as “chocolate”, or as semisweet and bittersweet in the US.
| Type | Made from | Taste, as the sources describe it | Legal name of its own? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dark | Cocoa mass, cocoa butter, sugar | Bitterness tends to rise with the cocoa percentage, less so in single-origin bars | No. Sold as “chocolate” in the EU and as semisweet or bittersweet in the US |
| Milk | Cocoa mass, cocoa butter, sugar, milk solids | Creamy notes, partly from the milk fat | Yes: EU, US and Codex |
| White | Cocoa butter, milk solids, sugar; no fat-free cocoa solids | Milky; caramel and fudge notes depend on how the milk powder was heated | Yes: EU, US (since 2002) and Codex |
| Ruby | Cocoa ingredients, cocoa butter, citric acid, dairy, sweetener; no added coloring | Berry-like and sour, as the EU regulation describes the pink cocoa mass | No. US: temporary market-test permit. EU: no category; framed as milk chocolate. Codex (2003 text): none |
The actual minimums for the EU, the US and Codex sit side by side in the comparison table in real vs compound chocolate, along with the caveats on reading US chocolate liquor figures.
Other chocolates you will see
Blond chocolate, also sold as caramelized white chocolate, is white chocolate heated slowly until its milk and sugar brown. It’s a trade name with no legal category of its own: the EU directive, the US standards and the Codex text don’t mention it. See blond chocolate in the glossary.
Gianduja is chocolate blended with finely ground hazelnuts. The Codex standard has its own category for it.
Compound chocolate, the coating you’ll often find on biscuits and wafers, is the one that can’t use the name. Our guide to real vs compound chocolate shows how to spot it on a label.
Which type for which job
Choose by the job, and read the label before the color. For eating, buy what you like; the percentage is a rough guide to bitterness and says nothing about quality. The consumers in that 2023 study liked a 70% bar and a 36% bar best, which is a fair reminder that there’s no wrong answer at the sweet end.
For dipping, molding and bonbon shells, use real chocolate and temper it. Couverture, with its extra cocoa butter, flows thinner and coats more evenly. Our step-by-step guide to tempering chocolate at home covers three methods, and how to make chocolate bonbons covers choosing chocolate for shells and fillings.
Milk and white chocolate behave a little differently from dark. A 2004 study of milk powders by Liang and Hartel found that the amount of free milk fat in the powder affected tempering conditions, hardness and resistance to bloom. Skip tempering and any of the three can set dull and streaky; why chocolate turns white explains what’s going on.
For baking, where the chocolate is melted into a batter or chopped into a dough, tempering doesn’t matter.
For gifts, white and ruby are the easy conversation starters, and a good dark bar with the origin on the wrapper suits anyone who already reads labels. If you’re not sure, give a mixed box.
Sources and open questions
Blond chocolate: no official view on whether it still meets the white chocolate definitions once it has browned.
The molecules that make ruby pink: not named in any peer-reviewed study we could locate, so online explanations of the color aren’t backed by one yet.
“Ruby beans”: we found no scientific source for a separate ruby variety of cocoa, so treat the term as marketing.