Sweet Chocolate

Sweet Chocolate is an American sweet pepper bred by Elwyn Meader and introduced by the University of New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station in 1965. It became known as an early-maturing brown sweet pepper suited to cooler and shorter-season growing areas, and modern seed listings still present that earliness and reliability as central to its identity.

The plant is described as early, productive, and dependable, with good fruit set in cooler conditions and strong performance in northern climates. The fruit are usually described as small bell to slightly tapered oblong peppers, commonly about 7.5 to 12.5 cm long, with thick, sweet flesh and a rich brick-red interior beneath the dark outer skin. The pods begin green and mature to a deep chocolate-brown, giving the variety its name and making it one of the more recognisable brown sweet peppers in seed trade.

Sweet Chocolate is consistently presented as a true sweet pepper rather than a pungent one, with a juicy, mild, rich flavour that works both fresh and cooked. Live descriptions repeatedly recommend it for salads, sandwiches, roasting, and general kitchen use, and its combination of dark exterior colour, red flesh, sweetness, and early maturity is the reason it has remained in circulation for decades.