Wild Foraged Linden Chocolate

Linden trees have edible seed pods that taste like chocolate, when prepared correctly.

It’s my dream someday to live an entire summer on foraged food, and in many cases, that will mean giving up some of my favorite treats and comfort foods.  While there are many foraged coffee substitutes, none of them contain caffeine.  That’s going to be a hard adjustment for me personally.

Chocolate, on the other hand, is supposed to be relatively easy to make from green seed pods of the linden tree.  Once they’re fully ripe, they become hard and bitter, and are more commonly roasted and used as a coffee substitute.  

In the summer months, when they’re still young and green, they’re supposed to smell like chocolate, and if well blended and lightly sweetened, all the sources I can find say they’re the best chocolate substitute available.  Or so they say…

I’m obviously not the first person to be interested in a local chocolate substitute for those of us living in temperate climates.  

Historically, there is an account in Edible Wild Plants of Eastern North America that talks about Fredrick the Great (in 1658) hiring chemists to try to mass-produce linden chocolate to corner the market on a local chocolate substitute.  Over and over they found the taste to be excellent, but couldn’t find a way to make it keep.  The compounds that flavor linden chocolate are volatile, and degrade after 24 hours once the linen seeds are ground.

Edible Wild Plants of Eastern North America doesn’t cite their sources, and I haven’t found any other source to back up the claim that it was a historically important potential chocolate substitute.  

While the internet repeats that linden chocolate is delicious, every single article sites the same book.  I can’t find anyone that’s actually tried to make it.  When the internet makes claims, and every single one sites the same source without actually trying it, I become skeptical.

Every recipe I’ve found has you take 5 parts green linden seeds, 1 part dried linden flowers, and a small amount of neutral oil (such as grapeseed) and thoroughly pulverize it all in a food processor.  The linden flowers are only available fresh early in the season, so you’ll need to plan ahead and save some, or buy them in bulk online.

I tried this method, and it completely failed.

Years after my failed attempt, several online foraging channels have since posted the secret to getting it right…

Roasting the seeds.

None of them say exactly how long, but they suggest 350 degrees “until fragrant.”

Looking at the videos, they’ve also browned slightly and gotten nice and crunchy.

Once browned and crunchy, they process quickly in a coffee grinder or food processor.  (My attempts at the green seeds completely failed in both, as did pounding in a mortar and pestle.)

Other sources say fermenting the seeds, and then roasting them, like you do when you make cacao bean chocolate, is the right process.  (Though I’ve never seen anyone try this method, so if you do, please let me know.)

Anyhow, the correct process is:

• Roast in a 350 degree oven until fragrant and slightly browned
• Cool completely
• Grind into a powder in a food processor or coffee grinder
• Add sugar to taste, and then a dash of neutral oil to bring the mixture together
• Enjoy

After failing to find pods with unroasted green Linden seeds, I haven’t been able to find pods for a few years, but now that I know the process, I can’t wait to find some and try again.

Oh, and I also recently received a comment from Tom in Europe via Email, and he suggests using fully ripe, rather than green beans:

“To make a decent Linden chocolate, you only have to pick mature fruits. I know all the books are saying to pick the green ones, but that’s a mistake. The unripe seeds inside green fruits taste horrible, while the taste of ripe seeds is quite nice, a little bit like fresh hazelnut, in my opinion. Right moment to harvest is around mid-september in the part of Europe i live in. You should then open the hard shell to get the seeds – only the seeds are used here! – and roast them until they get a coffee-like aroma. The final step is to mix them in a food processor as you would do for seed butter (linden seeds have a high-fat content). It’s definitely a time-consuming activity, but I’m pretty sure you could get good results with American linden trees, too.”

That’s a different approach than the foragers are using on social media, and I’m hoping to try both this year.

Have you tried making linden chocolate?  Did it work?  Leave me a note in the comments.