If you’ve ever wondered…

…what makes one chocolate more expensive than another, the proportion of of cocoa butter is a big reason. Cocoa butter has more commercial applications than cocoa solids have, which means different industries compete for the same commodity. Cosmetics and pharmaceutical companies buy cocoa butter by the boat load, driving the price up for food makers. Thus a high cocoa butter chocolate like couverture is quite a bit pricier than a mass-market milk chocolate, which has less.