History of milk chocolate

While visiting Jamaica from 1687 to 1689, Hans Sloan, a physician and botanist, who found the chocolate drink by the locals to be ‘nauseous’.

In 1727, Nicholas Sanders, an Englishman first blended chocolate with milk to produce the hot chocolate and served the drink for Sloane. Sir Hans Sloane was the first surgeon to King George II.

This was not modern milk by simply milk mixed with chocolate liquor.  Sanders had not perfected the process so many years later. John Cadbury borrowed his idea and attempted to perfect it.

Milk Chocolate Bar

Meanwhile, Hans Sloane developed a recipe that mastered the art of adding cocoa to milk. John Cadbury later teamed up with Sloane to create deliciously creamy hot chocolate that nearly all consumers could afford.

Cadbury acquired the rights and the label for ‘Sir Hans Sloane’s Milk Chocolate prepared after the original recipe.’

The directions were simple: ‘Put one ounce of chocolate to a pint of boiling milk, add sugar’. This product pre-dated the Cocoa Essence revolution, having been launching in 1849 and lasted a surprisingly long time until 1885.

In 1860s and 1870s, two Swiss men, Henri Nestlé and Daniel Peter produced the first milk chocolate bars.
History of milk chocolate 

Early History of Cadbury chocolate

John Cadbury started Cadbury Limited in 1831. He first opened a grocery store in Birmingham in 1824 before selling chocolate and cocoa beverages in 1831.  In 1861, George Cadbury and his brother Richard inherited the company from their parents with only 12 employees and built it into one of the world’s largest.

An important turning point for the company occurred in 1866, when it introduced a process for pressing the cocoa butter from the coca bean.

The addition of cocoa presses at Cadbury produced a reduced fat cocoa powder that the company named Cocoa Essence, which became an immediate success. The process was considered a trade secret.

By 1879 the firm had grown so successful that George Cadbury built what came to be known as the ‘factory in a garden’ on a parklike property in Bourneville, England.

Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate was developed and launched in the early 1905 and similar products by many other manufacturers followed. It remains a favorite of UK customers to this day.

In 1916, Cadbury decided to package the products into ½ lb, rather plainly decorated boxes and soon had a runaway success on their hands from the much more popular-tasting Milk Tray.
Early History of Cadbury chocolate