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Cacao butter (cocoa butter) is the pale yellow fat extracted from cocoa beans. It is used in some ointments, toiletries, and pharmaceuticals. It does not contain butter or other animal products; it is vegan.

The cacao tree, Theobroma cacao, is a small evergreen tree in the Malvaceae family. Each of its seeds contains a significant amount of fat (40-50%) as cocoa butter.

In 2023, world production of cocoa beans was 5.6 million tonnes, with Ivory Coast, Ghana and Indonesia the three largest producers.

The main constituent of cocoa butter is a triglyceride derived from palmitic acid, oleic acid, and stearic acid. The predominant triglycerides are POS, SOS, and POP, where P stands for palmitic, O for oleic, and S for stearic acid residues. Raw cocoa butter is 57-64% saturated fat, with stearic acid at 24-37% and palmitic acid at 24-30%. Unlike defatted cocoa, it contains only traces of caffeine and theobromine.

Cocoa butter displays polymorphism, with different crystalline forms that have different melting points. Melting chocolate and letting it solidify without tempering produces unstable polymorphic forms of cocoa butter, which can show as white patches called fat bloom. Cocoa butter from different places has different properties. Malaysian and Indonesian cocoa butter generally crystallize faster, and into a harder chocolate than Brazilian cocoa butter.

For a fat melting around body temperature, cocoa butter has good stability. Together with natural antioxidants, this prevents rancidity and gives it a storage life of two to five years. As a nontoxic solid at room temperature that melts at body temperature, it is considered an ideal base for medicinal suppositories.

Chocolate of every traditional type, dark, milk and white, contains cocoa butter, which sets the consistency and melting temperature of the chocolate. White chocolate is made from the cocoa butter of the bean with sugar and milk solids, and it contains none of the non-fat cocoa solids. Pressed cocoa butter on its own can taste unpleasant. Dark chocolate uses butter that is less deodorized, because manufacturers find its flavor more desirable, while white chocolate uses more deodorized butter.

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Related: Chocolate · Cocoa Absolute