Why chocolate on Valentine’s Day? The story of 14 February

February is generally synonymous with snow and skiing. It is also synonymous with love because on February 14, we celebrate Valentine’s Day which has become the feast of lovers. But why did Valentine’s Day become the feast of lovers? To answer this question, we have to go back to the 3rd century AD. At that time, Emperor Claudius II, known as Claudius Gothicus, spent his reign waging wars and needed many young men to fight them. However, this emperor who did not like Christians prohibited marriage because he considered that the young married men did not make good soldiers. For his part, the priest Valentine of Terni liked to secretly marry young couples according to the Catholic rite. Anyway, you can guess what happened next, the emperor had the priest arrested and he was severely beaten and beheaded on February 14 (269, 270?). But like all very old stories, you have to know how to disentangle the true from the false and what matters most is to enjoy the day and to please the person you love — with chocolate, for example. But then comes another question: Why offer chocolate on Valentine’s Day? To please the loved one? Yes, but not only because chocolate by its sensual side (here I am referring to human senses such as sight, smell, taste and touch) and by the pleasure that its tasting generates is very close to the feeling of being in love. Everyone has their own pleasures!
In addition, cocoa has long been surrounded by a legend, that of being an aphrodisiac. But is it really a legend?

Among the Aztecs, cocoa called “xocoatl” was a highly respected drink which only the elite (nobles, priests) could access. It is said that the Aztec emperor Moctezuma consumed 50 cups of it and since he had many wives, this gave rise to the connection between love force and cocoa. In more recent history, it would seem that Casanova and the Marquise de Pompadour also consumed it before starting crazy romantic nights.

It should not be forgotten that when chocolate arrived in Europe, it was sold in pharmacies because it was perceived to have healing properties like drugs. It also had a sulphurous reputation because in a 19th-century treatise on hygiene, the doctors É. Tourtelle and J. Hallé wrote that chocolate had “the faculty to awaken venereal desires and to excite the pleasures of love”

Currently and with the progress of science, it has been discovered that cocoa contains a large number of active substances such as antioxidants, caffeine and phenylethylamine, sometimes called the “love molecule”, which is linked to feelings of pleasure. But it would take an enormous amount of cocoa to feel any real aphrodisiac effect. There remains the imagination and the pleasure … of eating chocolate.