Chocolate for Valentine

Why is chocolate the Valentine’s King?

Oh beloved and hated Valentine , some of you may not even know the origin of this date or why it is celebrated, but what you surely know is that chocolate and flowers are the perfect couple on this romantic day.

Below I will give you a little more information and explain why chocolate is the triumph of February 14 year after year.

Valentine’s Day

Or Valentine’s Day comes from Lupercalia , a Roman celebration in which it was celebrated, worth the redundancy, fertility. The practice was not as romantic as now, rather the opposite.

On this holiday, women were beaten with whips made of animal skin dipped in animal blood (hence the red, I suppose) because this was considered to make them more fertile. I imagine that there are no documents or testimonies that prove it, but in any case, I am glad that the celebration no longer has anything to do with this.

In 496 Pope Gelasius I banned this celebration and passed it from February 15 to 14. Since then, official Valentine’s Day, patron saint of lovers.

Nowadays, it seems to us that Valentine ‘s Day is a purely commercial holiday from which advertising and large organizations profit every year, and it is so, but knowing its origins never hurts.

So where does the chocolate come from?

In the nineteenth century, it became fashionable to send and receive love letters on February 14, which is attributed to the Industrial Revolution, advances in printing and, of course, the birth of advertising.

The most popular were romantic postcards or cards, bows, flowers and hearts, but the most creative and creative used to accompany them with more gifts.

Back then, and having come to us after the discovery of America, chocolate was no longer just a drink, but a product of desire. An irrepressible sweet (like today).

Chocolate, little cocoa

The Aztecs used the cocoa bean as currency and consumed the drink (which was not sweet at the time) as a nutritious food .

For the more religious, it was also considered food of the gods and, as if that were not enough, it was said that Monctezuma endowed him with virility and helped him to succeed with the women of the time.

Hernán Cortés sent a letter to the king telling him about this new drink that, according to him, gave it vigor and strength . It was a drink that created addiction and the religious considered abusing it a sin if you took it in a period of abstinence.

Later we would add sugar and other spices to the cocoa and it would become the bomb for any European palate .

At the end of the century the costs of cocoa and that of postcards became cheaper, so that both became inseparable until today. The flower thing would come later.

Casanova + Chocolate = Valentine

Giacomo Casanova (from this man comes the “being a Casanova”) celebrated the libidinous powers of chocolate together with the Marquis de Sade, but it would be the Victorians who were ‘victorious’ in making chocolate a lethal weapon of seduction .

Apparently giving chocolate to a woman was a declaration of love , which is why several chocolate companies took advantage of it, such as Cardbury, which in 1861 launched the first Fancy Boxes , some marzipan-filled chocolates, and in 1868 launched the first box of chocolates for Valentine’s Day with heart shape.

In addition to being a box of chocolates, when you had already eaten them all you could use the box to store, for example, your lovers’ postcards. Everything thought to the millimeter.

Cadbury was the first, but it was soon followed by other companies in the cocoa industry and advertising companies in the United States. Little by little this fashion spread throughout Europe until today.

Chocolate as a substitute

It is not true (or at least not proven) that chocolate has aphrodisiac powers , but it is true that it contains substances that improve mood and provide pleasure. Come on, you will not deny me that a little chocolate does not change your mood in the first bite.

Give and cook with chocolate

Since we have learned the origins of Valentine’s Day and why the chocolate is essential these days, why not be a little more creative or creative this year?

A box of chocolates is a great gift, but you can try some other recipe that contains it in high doses, such as a three-chocolate cake , some chocolate truffles, some chocolate cookies or, why not, some chocolate fritters.

Since you start to show your love … Get it right!