As we have seen, the following substances occur in cacao in varying amounts:

Like the majority of plants and plant products, the cacao bean consists of vesicles or cells, closed on all sides and arranged in a series of layers. They are constructed of cellular tissue or cellulose, and contain fat, albumen, water, starch, theobromine, cacao pigment, besides sugar and salts in inferior quantities.

1. Water or Moisture.

There is present in the bean from 6 to 8 percent of water, a factor which bodes well for the proper germination of the seed, as when this latter is deprived of moisture, e. g. in the course of a too thorough drying, it speedily decays. Water is still evident in small quantities even in the largest and almost withered beans, as will be seen on comparison of the foregoing analyses.

2. Fat.

As a constituent at the expense of which respiration is effected, fat remains one of the most important resources of plant. It has a twofold excellence in this connection, and firstly as a highly calorifacient and carboniferous substance, and again because such a reserve enables the living organism to oxidise with particular ease, wherefore it is found accumulated in somewhat significant measure in the majority of seeds. When seen under the microscope it appears either as round coherent masses, or as crystalline aggregates clearly distinguishable from the rest of the cell contents on treatment with a solution of osmic acid. The fat in the cacao bean usually amounts to from 50-56 percent, or one half of the total weight of the shelled beans; the shell also contains from 4 to 5 percent of fat.[25] The unfermented bean has frequently, in addition to its bitter taste, a most unpleasant flavour, attributable to the rancidity of its fatty contents.

The raw bean contains rather more fat than the roasted bean, for whilst the one averages from 50 to 55 percent, there is seldom more than 48-52 percent in the other. The cause of this phenomenon may be connected with the enrichment of the shells in fat, and in some instances, as when the beans are over-roasted, is to be ascribed to the chemical change which the play of burning heat on fatty bodies involves, when a destructive decomposition of the whole ensues, with formations of acroleine. Chemically considered, cacao butter consists of a mixture of so-called esters, or compounds connected with ether, such as the glycerides of fatty acids, and contains, in addition to stearine, palmatine, and laurine[26], the glyceride of arachidic acid. It was also formerly supposed that formic, acetic and butyric acids were among the constituents of this ingredient, but the view has been proved erroneous by Lewkowitsch[27]; similarly, the presence of theobromic acid alleged by Kingzett[28] has been called into question by Graf.[29]

Cacao butter is a fairly firm fat of pleasant taste and smell, which varies in colour between yellowish white and yellow. When freshly expressed, it has frequently a brownish shade, passing after a short time into a pale yellow, and turning almost white on long keeping. The brown colour is due to pigment in suspension, which becomes sediment in the course of melting, when the butter asumes a normal colour, referrible to pigment dissolved in the butter oils, and secondarily to a dissolution of the products of roasting in these liquids, rather than to any matter in suspension. The pleasant smell and taste of cacao butter is probably closely allied to the dissolved substances mentioned.

The fat extracted from cacao by solvents differs essentially from that obtained by hydraulic pressure, a fact overlooked in some of even the most recent experiments, and which therefore cannot be too strongly emphasised. Extracted fat is yellowish white, sometimes approximating to grey, and after having been kept a long time, the whole becomes tinged with an actual whiteness, which first attacks the outer surface, and then rapidly progresses towards the centre in concentric paths, and which is a sign of rancidity. Its fracture is partly granular, the smell is not so pronounced as that of expressed fat, being even unpleasant at times, as in the case of faulty wares (but compare page), and it has a keen taste. Cacao butter does not, as is generally supposed, keep better than other vegetable fats, but is equally liable to become rancid, as Lewkowitsch[30] demonstrates. By rancidity is denoted that state of offensive taste and smell acquired by fatty substances on longer or shorter keeping and especially when they are not properly stored. What chemical re-arrangements of the respective constituents this state presupposes is very questionable; though it appears from the experiments of Lewkowitsch[30] and others[31] that the formation of acids does not play as prominent a part as the experimenter is inclined to think, nothwithstanding the marked increase in quantity which may occur. The primary cause of rancidity will rather be found in the oxidation products of the glycerine contained in all fats.