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The week of love has officially begun as Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and couples have started to celebrate the many days leading up to the D-day with a staple combo of roses and a box of chocolates. After all, it’s almost impossible to go wrong with a box of chocolates. Chocolate is the favourite way to express love on Valentine’s Day, and it is quite easy to understand why. This edible declaration of love makes one feel special and is absolutely gratifying. But have you ever wondered how chocolate actually came to be associated so much with Valentine’s Day?
As per historians, the connection between chocolate and love dates back to the Mayans, who were the first ones to start brewing cacao beans somewhere around 500 BC. They treated it as the "gift of the gods" and eventually started to use it in marriage ceremonies as a ritual. Yet, it took no less than 2000 years for chocolate to make its way to Europe, and a few hundred years after that for the sweet treat to become a Valentine’s Day staple.
It was in 1861 that a candy-maker named Richard Cadbury thought of selling chocolates for Valentine’s Day. Cadbury's British family used to manufacture chocolate, which was expensive to buy and could only be obtained by the elite class due to limited resources. The family was looking for a way to utilise cocoa butter that was extracted during the making of chocolate liquor. Richard figured out a way to make chocolate bars that were good in taste along with being economical. He simply packaged the chocolates in heart-shaped boxes, decorated them with rosebuds and cupids—two of the most popular symbols of love and romance among the Victorians—and started to sell them. And that was when a new Valentine’s Day tradition of giving chocolates was born. Cadbury, since then, has been credited with inventing the heart-shaped box of chocolate and changing how the world celebrates Valentine’s Day forever.
In America, however, a chocolate pioneer like Milton Hershey is known to have first started the commercial production of "Hershey’s Kisses," the drop-sized chocolates, in 1907. But it was chocolatier Russell Stover who truly linked chocolate with romance when she introduced the heart-shaped box of chocolates. Stover, along with her husband, first started selling chocolates wrapped in heart-shaped boxes in 1923, which quickly took off among chocolate lovers. The Stovers are still considered the best chocolate box company in the USA.
While most chocolatiers began the trend of chocolates in order to better sell their products, no one could have predicted how Valentine's Day would become synonymous with all things chocolate today. So which chocolate are you celebrating with this Valentine's Day?
