A chocolate bar is a confection containing chocolate, which may also contain layerings or mixtures that include nuts, fruit, caramel, nougat, and wafers. A flat, easily breakable, chocolate bar is also called a tablet. In some varieties of English and food labeling standards, the term chocolate bar is reserved for bars of solid chocolate, with candy bar used for products with additional ingredients.
A dark chocolate tablet
A Mayan holding sticks of ground cocoa paste
A block of unrefined ground cocoa paste, comparable to the chocolate that was made before the industrial era, and meant to be grated into drinks.
Fry and Sons Manufactory in Bristol in the 19th century
Chocolate, or cocoa, is a food made from roasted and ground cacao seed kernels that is available as a liquid, solid, or paste, either on its own or as a flavoring agent in other foods. Cacao has been consumed in some form for at least 5,300 years starting with the Mayo-Chinchipe culture in what is present-day Ecuador. Later Mesoamerican civilizations also consumed chocolate beverages before being introduced to Europe in the 16th century.
Chocolate in its most common forms: powder and bars
Image from a Maya ceramic depicting a container of frothed chocolate
Mexica. Man Carrying a Cacao Pod, 1440–1521. Volcanic stone, traces of red pigment. Brooklyn Museum.
"Traités nouveaux & curieux du café du thé et du chocolate", by Philippe Sylvestre Dufour, 1685 ("New and curious treatises of coffee, tea and chocolate")
