Easter. That time of year when small children (and, apparently, computer science students) wander the aisles of the nearest superstore, gazing in awe at the carefully packaged chocolate eggs of joy.

Foremost in their mind, one would imagine, is Bede’s goddess Eostre, the etymology of Jakob Grimm’s Eostremonat, the symbolism of eggs as fertility symbols, of new life, and of Mary Magdalene’s exclamation “Christ is risen!”.

The second thought that comes to mind is which of these commercial over-priced packages of pagan symbolism is the tastiest. We are here to guide you through this controversial minefield, taking it upon ourselves to sample the various offerings and report back our findings, ending this minutes-old argument once and for all.

Let us establish some ground rules.

1. The chocolate must, as the title suggests, be in egg form. Little bunnies are cute and delicious, but hardly in keeping with the theme.
2. Only eggs from established chocolatiers are allowed, so Marks&Spencer, Tesco et al. are out. (read: we are poor.)
3. Acknowledging the FACT that Jesus only ate milk chocolate eggs, we ignore dark, white, mint or orange eggs. (read: really, we are poor.)
4. Contrary to appearances, we are not professional chocolate tasters. Thus, we will probably end up preferring the sickly sweet not-legally-allowed-to-call-it-chocolate-in-mexico “chocolate” over the 97% cocoa offering, hand crafted on the steps of the Temple of Kukulcan by Quetzalcoatl himself. You’ll just have to suck it up.

Figure 1 shows the contestants:

Below the cut we explain the criteria, a summary of each egg, and finally draw our conclusions. Yes, it’s that serious.

Criteria

As Lindt and Sprüngli (1997) recommend, we assess on three main criteria:

• Aroma: assess and savour the distinctive yet individual aroma of each chocolate
• Taste: taste in small repeated quantities, seeing if the flavour lingers or diminishes too quickly
• Texture/Quality: how the chocolate breaks, does it melt in the mouth, leaving no residue

As we are focusing upon Easter, the presentation, packaging, scientifically-verifiable “Easter goodness”, and any extras will also be looked at.

To cleanse the palate, we will be utilising the delicious Jacob’s plain crackers, along with some tap water. Sorbet was originally considered, until deciding we didn’t want mango tasting chocolate throughout the experiment.

The eggs will be presented, tasted, and discussed one at a time, with the tasters unaware of the brand. A table follows comprising of the most insightful comments (Not, Al, “mmm, smells chocolate-y”) and final marks, listed in descending order.

Results

Egg	Presentation	Taste	Aroma	Quality/Texture	Score
Guylian	Nicely presented egg, on side, but focuses too much on chocolates. Slight Easter goodness with picture of daffodil (or possibly tulip. It’s yellow and pretty anyway). Multilingual box is exciting.	Sweet, maybe too sweet? Creamy and buttery, not too overpowering or rich.	Buttery, creamy aroma.	Breaks cleanly. Melts in the mouth well, with no residue.	8
Lindt	Giant box -> small egg. Overly festive.	Creamy and buttery. Too sickly?	Smells strongly of milk and cocoa. Rich, deep aroma.	Clean break. Nice bite.	7
Nestle (Smarties)	Exciting window design. Smarties foil++. Not happy about Smarties out of the egg. ‘R’ and ‘T’ letters are part of the window - nice touch.	Slighty nutty, nice and sweet. A little chalky/grainy?	Smells a little bitter. A bit nutty, not so sweet.	Not the cleanest break, a little chalky.	7
Mars (Milky Way)	Interesting design - but danger of crushage with open top. Little stars look to be having fun.	Nice creamy flavour, but not particularly cocoa-y or chocolate-y. Melty and creamy.	Rich buttery, creamy aroma - yet light.	Clean break, bit of a residue.	6.5
Lily O’Briens	Squashed-looking box. Average window. (Disappointing Mary-Ann story.)	Deliciously creamy. Slightly nutty. Nice aftertaste. Not much depth, equivalent to tinny sound.	No real aroma. Smells a little grainy, of almonds (?!)	Not the best break, looks a little chalky. Melts nicely though.	6
Cadbury’s (Mini Eggs)	Simple, too simple? Shows off Cadbury’s foil nicely.	Good milk chocolate. Creamy and sweet. A bit of a synthetic taste, and sticky residue.	Average buttery aroma. Slightly sickly.	Thin. Bit chalky to the bite.	5.5
Thornton’s	Nice colour scheme. Good window on egg (icing++), but shows off shoddy buttons bag.	Creamy while eating, but horrible (Hershey’s esque) aftertaste.	Average cocoa smell, not much else.	Cheap quality. Melts well.	4
Green & Black’s Milk	Enigmatic, mysterious window.	Bitter, chalky. Occasionally palatable. Dreadful aftertaste. F**cking horrible.	Smells a lot like dark chocolate - high cocoa content?	Thick egg. Clean break, but grainy.	2

Conclusions

Thankfully, we didn’t turn out with every egg getting a 7/10, which we had feared. Guylian was the most loved egg, with 2 of the 3 judges voting it their favourite, and gaining the highest average score. Second place went to, perhaps surprisingly, the Nestle Smarties egg - with 1 judge voting it their favourite (indeed, achieveing an unprecedented 10/10 - rigging accusations are being looked into. Perhaps next year some sort of weighted scoring system from a randomly selected two out of three judges will be introduced).

At the lower end of the spectrum we were surprised to find both Thornton’s and Green & Black’s. Their milk chocolate egg was, frankly, horrible. On the other hand, it is quite possibly the only organic egg available, as well as the purest chocolate one there. Still, we’d rather eat soil.

So there you have it. Whilst blindly paying over the odds could have left you with an egg-shaped mass of 100% organic dirt, our informative guide is sure to save your Easter from such an earthy disaster. At least it would have been, had we not have published it 6 days after Easter was over. Oh well - at least you’ll be able to make a more informed choice when rifling through the leftovers.

This article is pending acceptance to the British Food Journal. Possibly.

| Filed by Paul at 4:12 pm under Food | Trackback