Cadbury first mass-produced chocolate Easter eggs in Britain in 1875.
The company’s early eggs were made from dark chocolate and filled with dragees, sugar-coated almonds and other sweets. They followed an earlier French and German tradition of producing chocolate eggs, but Cadbury helped make the product widely available in Britain.
Cadbury’s later decorated eggs became more elaborate, using chocolate marzipan, icing and colored sugar flowers. The familiar hollow chocolate egg developed as manufacturing methods improved and chocolate could be molded more efficiently.
Chocolate Easter eggs are a modern commercial development of the older Easter egg symbol. The egg traditionally represents new life and resurrection. Cadbury is often associated with popularizing the British chocolate Easter egg, but it was not the first company anywhere to make a chocolate egg.