Chocolate and Love

A whistle-stop history of gifting chocolate for Valentine's Day...

Chocolate has a really long history as a food associated with love. The passion for chocolate can be seen as far back as the Mayan and Aztec people of Mesoamerica. The Mayans are known to have used cacao beans as currency, and only the most important people (elites, royals etc) were allowed to drink the xocolatl - a bitter, spicy drink made from ground cacao beans, cornmeal and chilli. There are stories about the drink being consumed at Aztec wedding ceremonies, and by Moctezuma II before his romantic trysts.

By the early 1600s, this passion for chocolate had swept across Europe. In London, chocolate houses were opening where people could come together to drink the ‘West Indian drink’ which was believed to cure the body of diseases.

Louis the IV was reported to have drunk it daily and Madame du Barry was said to use chocolate mixed with amber as an aphrodisiac to stimulate her lovers!

But, despite the growing popularity of chocolate in this liquid form, it took centuries for the two essential elements—the rise of chocolate as a popular solid food item, and the celebration of Valentine’s Day as a holiday—to merge.

The origin of Valentine’s Day is attributed to various early Christian martyrs named Valentine. And in the following centuries, Valentine’s Day blossomed as an increasingly popular late winter-early spring holiday.

Victorians loved showering their significant others with gifts and cards!

Richard Cadbury was the first to make boxed “eating chocolates,” which he packaged in lovely boxes he designed himself. Cadbury began putting Cupids and rosebuds on heart-shaped boxes in 1861. Even when the chocolates had been eaten, people could use the beautiful boxes to save mementos such as love letters.

And the rest, as they say, is history <3