Compound chocolate

Compound chocolate is a product made from a combination of cocoa, vegetable fat and sweeteners. It is used as a lower-cost alternative to pure chocolate (("whole chocolate" is natural raw chocolate that contains cocoa butter)) as it uses less-expensive hard vegetable fats such as coconut oil or palm kernel oil in place of the more expensive cocoa butter. It may also be known as "compound coating" or "chocolaty coating" when used as a coating for candy.

It is often used in less expensive chocolate bars to replace enrobed chocolate on a product. True chocolate containing cocoa butter must be tempered to maintain gloss of a coating. Compound coatings, however, do not need to be tempered. Instead, they are simply warmed to between 3 and 5 °C (5 and 9 °F) above the coating's melting point.

In the European Union a product can only be sold as chocolate if it contains a maximum of 5% vegetable oil.