A box of chocolates and a bunch of flowers. I don’t care who you are or where you’re from, if you rock up to a fourth or fifth date with either of those two things in your hands, you’re guaranteed to get a smile. The charitable act of giving flowers to someone you’ve got the hots for has been going on for as long as flowers have been around. Even back in Ancient Greece and the Middle Ages, it was common for people to use the gift of a bouquet or posy as an overt demonstration of affection. The Greeks associated flowers with gods and goddesses and would regularly take flowers with them to temples as a sign of devotion. This then morphed into men giving beautiful women flowers as a way to show off their religious dedication to their lover.
But what about chocolate? What does chocolate mean romantically? Does chocolate represent love? And where does the tradition of giving someone you fancy a box of assorted chocs come from? Many sources claim that the ritual of gifting someone chocolate on Valentine’s Day has been going on since the late-1800s. That means you’re still trying to get laid in the exact same fashion that your Victorian ancestors were. Pretty neat!
Apparently, it was Richard Cadbury (yes, that Cadbury) who first had the idea of linking chocolates with romance and love. A marketing savant who already had the delicious chocolate part down-pat but wanted to find a brand-new hook to help sell his products, Cadbury started to package his chocolates up in boxes that he designed himself. Cadbury decorated them with everything from cupids to roses and even made the boxes heart-shaped to fit in with the whole February 14th theme. Pretty cute, right? Well, all the Victorians thought so, too. Cadbury saw a huge increase in sales and the connection between chocolate and romance has remained steadfast ever since. Even vegan chocolate can be considered romantic nowadays.
Thirst is, of course, eternal. Your great-great-great-great grandparents were just as horny and desperate as you are today, and chocolate does seem to wield some genuinely aphrodisiac qualities. That’s obviously in good part due to the connotations built up by advertising and marketing agencies over the years – who can forget those adverts where the Milk Tray man is a James Bond-type who goes to great lengths and traverses great dangers to give a woman a Milk Tray? – but it works on a chemical level, too.
According to one study conducted by the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships that sought to interrogate “the effects of sweet taste experience on romantic perceptions,“ having something sweet to eat can actually make you feel more amorous. That study found that “participants in the sweet taste condition were more likely to imagine a more positive romantic relationship with the target”. Which might just be the most romantic sentence I’ve ever read. And I’ve read plenty of Mills & Boon.
The great Aztec Montezuma was even said to consume copious amounts of chocolate (usually in the form of a drink) before he engaged in a massive love-making session, using the stuff like some kind of delicious Viagra. So, there you go: chocolate doesn’t just have romantic associations but it’s got some pretty strong science to back it up as well.
Now, before you start gettings ideas, I’m not saying that you need to make sure you and your partner eat a bar of Tony’s Chocolonely the next time you’re planning on getting intimate. I’m just saying that it probably wouldn’t hurt.