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, as it uses less-expensive hard vegetable fats such as coconut oil or palm kernel oil in place of the more expensive cocoa butter.

True chocolate containing cocoa butter must be tempered to maintain gloss of a coating.

Instead, they are simply warmed to between 3 and 5 °C (5 and 9 °F) above the coating's melting point.

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