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 for example, 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 backup 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 cant 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 grape seed) 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.
Sources say that the idea to make chocolate out of linden seed pods comes from the smell of the pods themselves. They’re supposed to have an intoxicating chocolate aroma. Ok then, step one: Smell the fresh pods. Answer: definite nope.
The pods don’t really smell like anything. A little woodsy perhaps, a bit green like grass or bark, but no strong aroma of any sort.
Step two: When bitten they taste just like chocolate, thus all you really need to do is mash them up and you’re all set. With that in mind I was expecting that the linden fruit would be a bit like a berry, soft and spongy on the inside with perhaps little seeds. It’s firm on the outside, but none the less I gave it a bite.
My teeth scraped off a thin layer of green pulp from the outside, that tasted a bit like grass with a lot of unpleasant astringency. The seed was so hard that I could not get my teeth through it. This is not looking promising, but still, I press on.
Sources say that they can be mashed up easily by a mortar and pestle, and that the resulting pulp is basically chocolate mash. After quite a while beating at them, I’ve only managed to scrape off the exterior pulp a bit, and even with blunt force, the seeds themselves are not opening. Moving on to the next step, trying a food processor.
After a full 5 minutes in the food processor, the motor was beginning to smoke a bit, but I didn’t have anything resembling a mash. I’d finally gotten a few of the seeds to open, which is an improvement I suppose. I cannot think of a way to process this into a mash short of some sort of industrial grinder.
Ok then, perhaps I’m missing something. There’s a green pulp on the outside, then a layer of hard shell just below. One of the cracked open seeds had a small meat inside. I tried the seed meat, and I was able to hold the foul tasting thing in my mouth for about 15 seconds. It was astringent, much more so than the outside seed coat. No hint of pleasant anything and definitely not chocolate.
For science, I tried the hard empty seed coat as well. That tasted like cardboard, without much other flavor. Which to be honest, was a relief after the seed meat.
So where does this linden chocolate story come from? It’s hard to say really. Edible Wild Plants of Eastern North America was published in 1948 and does not cite any sources. For linden, it says:
“It has long been known in Europe, where it was first discovered by a French chemist, Missa, that the fruits of the linden ground with some flowers furnish a paste which in texture and taste “perfectly” resembles chocolate. Various attempts have been made in Europe to produce this chocolate-substitute on a commercial scale but, owing to the liability of the paste to decomposition, all have proved impracticable. The most conspicuous case was at the time of Fredrick the Great, when that monarch engaged a German chemist to check the work of Missa. The results were entirely satisfactory but, as above stated, it was found that the new chocolate would not keep. On this Ventenat [a distinguished french botanist at the time] remarks, that, if the subject had been pursued a little further, and the fruits of the American species of lindens taken, the success would probably have been complete.“
So there’s a clue. Chemists at the time believed for some reason that there were subtle differences in the linden found in America, and that North American linden trees could produce a delicious shelf stable chocolate. My backyard science shows otherwise. North American linden seeds are disgusting.
I am still willing to believe, based on the astringency, that the fully mature seeds might make a decent coffee substitute. I’ll have to harvest more in the fall and give it a go.
If the linden chocolate story is true, it is only true for some species of European linden that must be substantially different. I have found no modern references to verify it. Thus, a challenge to you my readers: if any of you have access to European linden seeds, give it a try. I’d love to hear your results.
Tabea
As I live in Swizerland with a lovely Linden tree next to my house, I’m eager to try it! But I must say that we have 2 kind of Linden here. With small leaf and with big leafs. We take the flowers only from the big leaf tree and do not touch the other one! Did you know that we eat the leafs wenn they are just coming out? Great salat ! But I was reased in fear of the seeds. They said that it is poisonous ! So, if I do not come back to tell you how it went, it’s that I killed myself for science ! Nah! I’m joking !
Tabea
I must correct myself ! We only harvest from the small leaf linden.
Ashley Adamant
I’d love to hear how it goes. Every way we’ve tried to eat the American linden seeds they’ve been really horrible. The leaves and flowers are great, but the seeds are terrible. I’d love to hear if you have success making anything resembling chocolate!
Liz
I wonder if there is a vital step that never got passed on. Like maybe you have to ferment the seeds, or soak them in some kind of liquid or oil for a while before they can be mashed–and that fermentation and/or soaking would change the flavor. Awesome experimentation though! Thank you for sharing.
Ashley Adamant
That’s possible, and I could believe there’s some kind of soaking/fermentation process that leaches out the nasty.
LUKE
Chocolate, coffee and tea go through a roasting and fermentation stage. Have you tried roasting them before your mentioned process? Just curious.
Ashley Adamant
A good point…The directions for making linden seed coffee that I found involve roasting them. Given how rock hard they are, they’ll need something before they could be ground successfully.
For chocolate though, I was amazed at how little flavor they had. I can’t imagine anything making them taste like chocolate. Sure, fermenting might make them easier to grind, but I can’t imagine it giving them the floral taste notes that all the books describe.
Tabea
Hi! The seeds are Nos ready here in Switzerland. First, it smells nothing like chocolate. None of the two kind of linden seeds smells. But it was easy to bite in the fresh ones. I try to roast some, but it doesn’t help. No taste, no smells. So, no luck on my Side!
Ashley Adamant
Thank you so much for checking! I’m glad it’s not just ours. Sometimes foraging information is just copied from one book to the next, without anyone ever trying it…
pamella
Just bit into some linden berries since no flowers yet. no chocolate flavor, though seems a bit fresh almost grassy but not quite and yes that astringency does come through at the back of my throat. Quite interesting. I intend to get more when flowering and then try again also in the fall and compare all. There is a big leaf and smaller leaf nearby- will check both. Today was berry from big leaf.
JS
Great experiment! Just browsing the web, found something related, wanted to come back and make a connection. According to this site, for a different species, bay nuts: “Before roasting, or if not roasted properly, the nut is extremely bitter and astringent, similar to acorns and olives before they are cured. You will NOT want to eat the nut before roasting.
http://www.rootedfood.com/musings/2014/12/9/bay-nuts
They say that the roasting cures it into a chocolate-coffee-like flavor; I wonder if some aspect of the chemistry of roasting degrades some bitter thing into some floral thing?
Liza
Great Article! I’m glad you tried it, I was hoping for a better outcome though, I got quite excited to be honest! I will have to try some of ones here in the UK.
Sophia
Hi! Just have eaten the early fruits of the linden. They taste fine. They are still soft now ( it is July 10 ) , After chewing they are a little bit slimy, but still fine. I ‘d love to know what exactly is in the fruits> vitamines, minerals and so on ? When you know something about the composition that should be great. Greetz from Holland ~ Sophia
Ashley Adamant
I think in the ones you have in Europe are quite different from the ones we have here. As to nutrition, I don’t know and I have no idea if anyone’s ever analyzed them. It’s good to know the ones in Holland taste good though, a far cry from ours here in the Northeastern US.
Roxy
I took a chocolate making class in Belize. The chocolate fruit is delicious, but the seeds were horrible… Because the seeds were fresh. The seeds have to ferment while the fruit rots. Then the seeds are washed after fermentation and then roasted. That’s when it finally tastes like chocolate. I’m wondering if, like some of the commenters mentioned, the seeds need to ferment and then roasted as the chocolate beans had to. By the way, I bought some chocolate beans to bring home and no amount of mortar and pestle it food processing made it taste creamy and delicious. In Belize, we used a flat mortar and a sort of scraper made from lava rock. The pits and crannies in the rock made enough friction to heat and temper the beans, which is how it made the chocolate delicious and buttery.
Tom
Hi ! My English is not that great but i thought i should have a try ! For making a decent linden chocolate you have to pick mature fruits only. 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 crack the hard shell open to get the seeds – only the seeds are used here ! – and roast them until they get a coffee-like aroma. Final step is to mix them in a food processor like you would do for a 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.
Admin
Wow, that’s so interesting. I may have to try your instructions this season. Thank you, Tom!