Freya leads our sensory testing program, overseeing the rigorous evaluation processes that ensure our alternative chocolate delivers the taste, texture, and mouthfeel manufacturers and consumers expect. Her work bridges the gap between food science and real-world consumer experience.

Q: Nukoko can’t legally be called “chocolate”, it’s an alternative. From a sensory science perspective, how does that change your work?

Freya: We’re trying to deliver what people actually want when they reach for chocolate. It’s the sensory experience of indulgence, satisfaction, and pleasure.

The legal definition focuses on how much cocoa percentage is in the product. But here’s the interesting part: if it looks like chocolate, melts like chocolate, and satisfies like chocolate, what does the legal definition actually matter to the person eating it?

Consumer satisfaction is about flavour, texture, mouthfeel, and how a product makes you feel. 

Q: So when someone tastes Nukoko, what are you hoping they experience?

Freya: The same thing they experience with traditional chocolate. That’s the benchmark.

We’re not trying to create something “almost as good as chocolate.” We’re creating an equivalent sensory experience using different ingredients. The fact that it’s an alternative chocolate doesn’t change what your taste buds and brain experience.

Think about it this way: if I gave you two samples—one traditional milk chocolate, one our milk chocolate alternative, and didn’t tell you which was which, the goal is that you’d struggle to identify which is which based purely on sensory characteristics.

That’s what three years of development has been about.

Q: Walk us through what “sensory characteristics” actually means in practice.

Freya: It’s multidimensional. We’re evaluating:

• Appearance: Color, glossiness, snap when you break it
• Aroma: The smell before you taste it, is it rich, inviting, complex?
• Flavor: Not just “chocolatey” but the specific notes, bitter, sweet, roasted, fruity
• Texture: How it breaks, how it melts, the mouthfeel as it dissolves
• Finish: What lingers after you swallow, does it leave a pleasant coating or turn chalky?

Traditional chocolate has a very specific profile across all these dimensions. My job is to work on matching that profile using fava beans instead of cocoa.

Q: Fava beans seem like an odd starting point for a creating chocolate experience. How did you even know this was possible?

Freya: Food chemistry has evolved enormously. We now understand that flavour compounds can be developed through a range of processes, regardless of the starting ingredient, such as heat treatment (think cooking at home and how it changes the flavour of the raw ingredients.)

Cocoa’s characteristic flavour comes from chemical reactions during fermentation and roasting of cacao beans. We’re not working with raw fava beans and hoping they magically taste like chocolate. We’re using our proprietary platform to develop specific flavour compounds that mimic what happens naturally in cocoa processing. We’ve gained a lot of interest in our use of Fava beans.

The chemistry is sophisticated, but the principle is straightforward: create the compounds that define chocolates sensory experience.

Q: You mentioned matching traditional chocolate. But traditional chocolate varies hugely. What’s your reference point?

Freya: You’re right. There’s no single “chocolate” flavour. That’s actually helpful for us.

We aim for the middle range, what most consumers associate with milk chocolate or dark chocolate in everyday products. 

Our sensory testing compares our product against commercial chocolate benchmarks. If we perform within the natural variation range of traditional chocolate, then functionally, we’re delivering equivalent experience.

The fact that we’re using different ingredients doesn’t matter if the end sensory result is indistinguishable.

Q: Let’s talk about what you can’t reveal. Where’s the line between what you can share and what’s proprietary?

Freya: (laughs) A lot is proprietary. The specific protocols, processing temperatures and timings are all competitive advantage.

What I can say is that we’ve identified the key sensory attributes consumers expect, and we’ve developed processes to reliably deliver those attributes. The exact how is protected, but the outcome is measurable.

We use the same sensory testing methodologies that traditional chocolate manufacturers use. Triangle tests, descriptive analysis, consumer acceptance testing. The results demonstrate equivalence, even if I can’t detail the exact chemistry behind it.

Q: Traditional chocolate brands are now reformulating below legal chocolate thresholds too. Does that change how you think about your work?

Freya: It validates what we’ve been saying: the legal definition and consumer experience are separating.

Those brands are being forced into “chocolate flavour” territory by economic and supply constraints. We chose this territory deliberately because we saw a better path forward.

But ultimately, we’re all facing the same challenge: how do you deliver chocolate satisfaction when traditional cocoa-based chocolate is increasingly difficult to produce affordably and sustainably?

The answer isn’t just reducing the cocoa percentage. It’s rethinking the entire approach—ingredients, processing, sourcing. That’s what makes being part of the team at Nukoko so exciting. 

Q: You’ve mentioned “chocolate satisfaction” several times. What does that actually mean scientifically?

Freya: It’s a combination of sensory pleasure, expectation fulfilment, and emotional response.

When someone bites into chocolate, they have conscious expectations—”this should taste rich and sweet”—and unconscious ones—”this should melt smoothly and have a satisfying mouthfeel.”

Meeting both requires understanding not just what compounds create chocolate flavour, but how texture and temperature interact with flavour perception. It’s why getting mouthfeel right was as important as getting flavour right.

Satisfaction is holistic. Every dimension has to work together, or the experience feels “off” even if people can’t articulate exactly why.

Q: What surprises manufacturers most when they first evaluate your product?

Freya: That it processes exactly like traditional chocolate. Same tempering behaviour, same viscosity for enrobing, same performance in baking applications.

They expect to need significant reformulation. Instead, we’ve designed our product to function as a drop-in alternative in most applications.

Q: Where do you see this category—, chocolate alternatives—going in the next five years?

Freya: I think the distinction between “chocolate” and “chocolate alternative” will blur in consumers’ minds, even if the legal definitions remain.

People are already comfortable with “plant-based milk” being colloquially called “milk.” “Chocolate” might follow the same path, becoming an umbrella term for chocolate-like indulgence, regardless of exact ingredient composition.

From a sensory science perspective, that means our standards have to keep pace with or exceed traditional chocolate. We can’t be “good enough.” We have to be equivalent or better. We’re already seeing this trend across the industry.

Q: Final question: Do you ever just eat chocolate for pleasure anymore, or has working on this ruined it for you?

Freya: (laughs) Oh, I still love chocolate. All chocolate, traditional, alternatives, everything. If anything, working on this has deepened my appreciation for how complex and remarkable the chocolate sensory experience really is.

When I taste our product now, I taste both the science and the pleasure. I know the work that went into every aspect of that experience. And honestly? That makes it more satisfying, not less.We’re creating something that solves real industry problems and delivers genuine satisfaction. Who doesn’t love chocolate?!