NOTHING is more symbolic of the romance of Valentine’s Day than a box of chocolates, traditionally a gift from Him to Her. Chocolate, with its luxurious texture and pleasurable taste, has become the edible correlate to love and desire. And although scientists haven’t discovered any definitive difference in the way men and women respond to chocolate, conventional wisdom is that women naturally crave the stuff.

It’s no wonder, given the barrage of advertisements that depict wild-eyed females smacking their lips, or breaking down doors and rioting in the streets, even for slimmed-down treats like Oreo 100 Calorie Mini-Cakesters. Once the women in the ads take their first bite, a chocolate-induced euphoria invariably follows, barely disguising the association of female sexual pleasure with the candy.

The comical and extreme versions of these ideas are new, but the association of chocolate with sensual pleasure is not. For decades after this “food of the gods” was brought to Europe in the 1500s by Spanish explorers, chocolate was promoted in medical and scientific treatises as a stimulant, love potion, cure for impotence, and an aid to conception. One Spanish physician, Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma, wrote in the 17th century that chocolate “vehemently Incites to Venus, and causeth Conception in women, hastens and facilitates their Delivery.”

Such potency was believed to affect men as well. The English doctor Henry Stubbs, writing in the same era, extolled his countrymen’s “great use of Chocolate in Venery, and for Supplying the Testicles with a Balsam, or a Sap.”