London - Ever since man embarked on his ceaseless quest for knowledge, there have been questions that don’t really need answers.
But some of the finest minds of science, engineering and craftsmanship have combined to examine one of them anyway: precisely how useless is a chocolate teapot?
Would it turn into a steaming, molten splodge as soon as boiling water was introduced? Wouldn’t the spout just go floppy and prevent the tea being poured? And surely the brew would taste like a cross between day-old hot choc and recycled canal water?
All these ponderables faced a specialist team at Nestlé when the corporation set about trying to determine the effectiveness or otherwise of a mythical piece of culinary equipment that has become part of modern English usage as an insult (To wit: “He’s as useful as a chocolate teapot”).
It took six weeks of planning, countless equations and several failed prototypes before master chocolatier John Costello and his team at the Nestlé Product Technology Centre in York were ready to craft the perfect teapot from chocolate.
First decision: milk or plain? They opted for dark chocolate with a 65 percent cocoa content, the logic being that it contained the best fat composition to stay solid. And in any case, it tastes rather good. Then a pukka-looking teapot, short and stout, was crafted in a silicone mould. The pot had a large opening at the lid to let the initial waft of steam escape quickly, and a hand-hollowed spout. The manufacturing process took just over two and a half hours. And then it was time for tea.
Filmed by a crew from BBC’s The One Show, presenter Marty Jopson poured freshly boiled water into the pot and added a couple of teabags. The good news: it didn’t immediately melt. As the tea brewed for the requisite two minutes, Mr Costello reflected on the challenge and admitted: “We thought we would probably end up with chocolate tea.”
But he added: “Interestingly, if you pour the water in a certain way and you don’t stir inside, the chocolate on the inside of the shell melts but doesn’t move anywhere. So you get a very, very small amount of residue coming up to the top.”
In a moment of great triumph, the tea was poured into a cup and sampled. Verdict: it tasted like tea, with a hint of chocolate. Now… where’s that inflatable dartboard? - Daily Mail