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Chocolate: What's Love Got to Do With It?
| Article
# : |
13974 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1988 |
1,129 Words |
| Author
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John Grossmann
John Grossmann is a freelance writer based in Jamison,
Pennsylvania. His articles are frequently published in major
magazines and newspapers. |
In Helena, Montana, a slightly battered candy canister, probably on the order of forty years old, returns every holiday for a refill to the Parrot, a venerable confection store on North Main Street. The Parrot has wooden booths and a working soda fountain, makes its own ice cream and fudge sauce, and hand-dips it chocolate candies. The woman who brings in the canister has it refilled for Valentine's Day and throughout the year with a house specialty: chocolate-covered almond "rocos," her husband's favorite.
"She started coming in when she was first married," says Nancy Duensing, whose family owns the Parrot. "Her husband is a retired dentist in his sixties."
Chocolate and love, a rich blend indeed.
The pairing traces back centuries, at least to Aztec Emperor Montezuma, who made chocolate a part of his regular visits to his harem. According to some accounts, he plied his concubines with chocolate prior to his trysts. Another version says he drank the chocolate--up to ninety glasses in an evening. Casanova also believed chocolate to be an aid in seduction and he routinely served it to his lovers. Although condemned by seventeenth-century religious leaders as "the beverage of Satan," chocolate was warmly received by the French court, notably by Louis XIV himself, who accepted it as a gift from his fiancée, Maria Theresa of Spain.
"Sweets for the sweet," wrote William Shakespeare in Hamlet, and with chocolate vying with long-stemmed roses as the gift de rigueur this Valentine's Day, that sentiment clearly prevails in all manner of shapes
... (1997 of 6686 Characters)
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