“People need chocolate,” Meredith Lindsay says. “It’s comfort food, but it’s also a historical delicacy. It’s something special, yet it’s also familiar.”
For Lindsay, that last claim is especially true. Indeed, as she speaks, she’s sitting at a table covered in truffles she’s made. Some are studded with peanuts or pistachios while others are festooned with dried flowers or flavored sugar.
Lindsay is the owner and chef behind MELT Chocolatier, which she says opened about seven years ago. At first, she produced and sold her truffles exclusively out of Marjolaine, a French-style bakery on State Street. She’s since expanded distribution to two flower shops down the coast—Autumn Rose in Milford and Blossoms At Dailey’s in Fairfield—and is now moving production to her own commercial kitchen space.
Lindsay found her way to chocolate after 15 years as a line cook and baker, but the new terrain came with bittersweet complications. “It’s very scientific,” she says. “Either it comes out or it doesn’t. You can overheat chocolate by a single degree and it’s spent.” Tempering chocolate—the process of heating it so that the sugar crystals align to make it shinier, snappier and shelf-stable—is the culinary equivalent of threading a needle.
That came as a surprise. “I never thought about how temperamental chocolate was before I started,” Lindsay says, going on to describe “sugar bloom” and “milk bloom”—two ways in which chocolate can fall out of temper and become chalky or covered in condensation. “I have a tempering machine now,” she says, “because it makes me sane.”
After the chocolate is tempered, the more flexible process of flavor creation can begin. Of MELT’s 17 truffle flavors, about half are classic favorites—Peanut Butter, Raspberry, Hazelnut—while others are more experimental, like Cinnamon Chamomile and Ancho Chile & Blueberry. If that weren’t enough, MELT also “[caters] to chocolate lovers with special dietary needs including nut-free, gluten-free, alcohol-free and vegan,” according to the website.
I started with the basics, sampling milk, dark and white chocolate truffles, all of which were rich, dense and balanced. While many of Lindsay’s truffles are sweet—the Mint truffle, with its brisk, creamy ganache filling was a standout—her most interesting flavors celebrate and explore good chocolate’s sophisticated bitterness.
One of them is the Earl Grey & Lavender truffle. The filling was herbal and only barely sweet. Lindsay says it was the first recipe she perfected, and its descendant is the Green Tea & Rose Water, which is one of MELT’s strangest and most delicious offerings. The jammy, rich taste of rosewater was surprisingly strong when I first bit into the truffle, and the effect of tasting and smelling rose petals at the same time was novel. Green tea sharpened the rose and, when combined with its dark chocolate shell, the truffle was complex, bitter and floral.
“A lot of the things I come up with—this is going to sound cheesy—come from a sense of romance,” Lindsay says. She’s currently inventing a new flavor, Chai & Orange, which she says is inspired by one of her favorite songs, Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne as sung by Nina Simone, in which the witchy love interest “feeds you tea and oranges.” Of the new flavor, she says, “It might be terrible, but I feel like it’ll be good.”
Speaking of citrus, I end my tasting with the Orange Cayenne truffle. Lindsay warns me to save it for last, because, as she says, “it’s not just a pinch of cayenne. There’s a lot in there.” Another dark chocolate offering, the first flavor that asserted itself was the orange—not the fruit so much as the bitter, pungent peel. The cayenne was quieter to start, before building to a spice level that’s unusual for a dessert, lingering long after the truffle was gone. It was the single-best chocolate I’ve ever eaten.
Lindsay, who just opened a commercial kitchen in Milford for MELT, says that she now wants to transition from chocolatier to chocolate-maker—the difference being that chocolate-makers are in control of every step of their confections, beginning with raw cacao beans, while chocolatiers get their chocolate in bars or chips.
More creative control will allow Lindsay to create even more unusual tastes, which should tickle MELT’s most daring customers as well as Lindsay herself. Her “favorite flavors,” she says, are the ones that please the most adventurous palates.
Written and photographed by Sorrel Westbrook.
