Even in a pandemic — perhaps especially in a pandemic — nothing can stop the onslaught of Valentine’s Day advertising. Merchandise of all shapes and sizes is briefly transformed into heart-shaped objects. The entire food menu is colored red, or marketed as a more romantic version of its former self (“love sausage,” anyone?). Yet when the pressure is on to express our passion, many of us fall back on a Valentine’s Day staple: chocolate, the ultimate food of love.
The connection between chocolate and romance is a long-standing one. Cacao, the basic ingredient for chocolate, first gained social importance in Mesoamerica, where the beans were used to flavor food and make drinks as early as 2,000 BC. The Mayans and Aztecs traded in cacao.
The ingredient was also an element of ritual offerings, including those related to fertility and love. Drinks made with cocoa and flavored with spices, honey, or flowers were exchanged and drunk at important moments, such as in negotiations between a bridegroom and his future father-in-law.
European colonizers were initially skeptical of cocoa, but eventually they too were seduced by it and took the beans to their homelands. At first, chocolate was reserved for royalty and the elite, but the taste for it quickly spread. Many were convinced of the energizing powers of chocolate – not without reason, as cocoa contains theobromine and caffeine, both mild stimulants.
It was the Victorians who finally established chocolate as the food of romance, especially for Valentine’s Day. People were sending sweet things on this day even in medieval times. Charles, Duke of Orleans, wrote the first known Valentine’s Day love poem in 1415, while imprisoned in the Tower of London (“I am already sick of love / My very gentle Valentine,” he said to his wife).
But it was Richard Cadbury, the eponymous founder of the British chocolate company, who made Valentine’s Day so sweet. In 1861, Cadbury came up with the idea of filling his signature treats in a heart-shaped box to be distributed on the eve of February 14. Even after the chocolates had long since disappeared, girls in love could fill the boxes with mementos of their loved ones – and tastier treats.
Americans cemented the connection between chocolate and romance with the invention of Hershey’s “Kisses” in the early 20th century. These days, no Valentine’s meal would be complete without chocolate cream, a suggestive dessert that is a triumph of precision baking. (The pandemic has one positive: This year, most of us will be spared an expensive outing to a restaurant full of oddball couples.)
Chocolate love isn’t always a romance of equals. In America, men and women buy chocolate for each other on Valentine’s Day, but in Japan, women are expected to buy chocolates for their sweethearts. The tradition’s roots go back to sweets (again). In the 1950s, heart-shaped chocolates were marketed as an acceptable way for women to express kokuhaku — a confession of their love — which at the time was considered inappropriately forward (men get their chance a month later on “White Day,” when they can return the gesture).
The food of love can obscure a deeper commitment, however. Look closely at chocolate advertisements and you’ll see that most feature a woman enjoying her delicious treat, alone. It’s almost as if chocolate is a substitute for other earthly pleasures. And who needs a man – or sex – when chocolate is just as sweet? / The Economist, 1843.
Source: https://www.gazetatema.net/2021/02/13/shen-valentini-si-u-be-cokollata-ushqimi-i-dashurise#galeria