Compound chocolate is a chocolate-flavoured coating in which cheaper vegetable fats stand in for cocoa butter, so it melts, coats and sets without the tempering that real chocolate demands. Built from cocoa powder (or low-fat cocoa solids), sugar and a hard vegetable fat, it is the workhorse of industrial confectionery — the material behind coated biscuits, ice-cream shells, moulded novelties, chocolate chips that hold their shape in a hot oven and the glossy enrobing on countless supermarket sweets. It goes by many trade names: compound coating, confectioner's coating, summer coating, "chocolatey" coating, and — in dipping form — candy melts or almond bark.