Read by Matilda Longbottom

Valentine’s Day, it turns out, owes a lot to Geoffrey Chaucer, the 14^th-century author of The Canterbury Tales. It was Geoffrey who pointed out – in a 1375 poem titled Parliament of Foules – that February 14^th was the beginning of the birds’ mating season, thus adding a spark of romance to a day that until then had been a memorial to a decapitated Christian priest. (Or priests; according to theologians, there were at least three Saint Valentines.) Soon mate-minded aristocrats adopted the day as a prime time to send love notes to objects of their affection – of which the very earliest known dates to February of 1415 and was written by Charles, the French Duke of Orleans, then a prisoner in the Tower of London, to his wife back home. In it, he refers to her as his “very gentle Valentine.”

Nowadays such love notes are likely to be paired with presents, which – let’s not get above ourselves – are common courtship ploys in the animal world. Snowy owls woo their intendeds with gifts of frozen lemmings; roadrunners charm with dead lizards; and penguins offer pebbles. People, on Valentine’s Day, most popularly show up at their loved one’s door with roses and chocolates, though the occasional show-off makes everyone else look bad by proffering diamond necklaces or trips to Hawaii.

Chocolate, however, packs an added punch. For centuries, it’s been touted as an aphrodisiac – a word that comes to us straight from Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love.

The story goes that the Aztec monarch Montezuma would toss down 50 cups of chocolatl before visiting his harem; and chocolate’s reputation for boosting sexual prowess accompanied it back to Europe with the conquistadors. Legendary 18^th-century lover Giacomo Casanova dubbed it the “elixir of love,” and Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV, drank it in preparation for a hot night with the king. Even those who would rather have done without it attested to its potency: in 1624, Viennese theologian Franciscus Rauch blamed chocolate for a spate of scandalous misbehavior in monasteries and went so far as to ask the pope, for the good of monkish morals, to excommunicate it. (He didn’t.)

Whatever was happening in all those bedrooms, however, almost certainly wasn’t the fault of chocolate. Yummy as it is melting in the mouth, the chemical effects of chocolate are lackluster. It does contain anandamide, a cannabinoid that targets the same brain regions as the prime psychoactive ingredient in pot – but it’s present in such teeny quantities that researchers calculate you’d have to scarf down 10 pounds or more before experiencing so much as a whiff of an effect. Chocolate’s content of phenylethylamine (PEA) is also disappointing. Optimistically nicknamed the “love drug,” PEA causes brain cells to release dopamine, a neurotransmitter that activates the brain’s pleasure centers. That sounds good until you realize that PEA, ingested in chocolate, is broken down in the digestive tract and disappears before it has a chance to do anything exciting.

Similarly disillusioning is the cold truth about oysters. Belief in the aphrodisiacal oyster dates back at least to the Romans. The Roman physician Galen, in the days before Viagra, prescribed oysters to those in need of a sexual pick-me-up; and Casanova – presumably along with his chocolate – is said to have slurped down 50 oysters on the half shell every morning to keep his libido up and running. Researchers, however, point out that the effect of oysters – if any – is likely psychological. To date, the crucial study of oysters as sex food showed that some mollusks produce certain amino acids in their retinas that boost production of sex hormones in lab rats. This led to a lot of overblown excitement in the media, but the bottom line on the aphrodisiacal oyster is a resounding meh.

Practically everything in the garden, at one time or another, has been touted as an aphrodisiac – including asparagus, beans, arugula, fennel, eggplants, turnips, and onions. Asparagus – which pops up so suggestively in the early Spring – is cited as love food in Pliny the Elder’s encyclopedic first-century Natural History and in the second-century Kama Sutra; and asparagus was on the menu for the amorous Renaissance man, along with prunes, garlic, nettle seeds, and dried fox testicles. (It was also banned from 19^th-century girls’ schools, for fear of its effect on excitable teens.)

Carrots, in their heyday, were hot stuff. Roman soldiers were said to have fed their female captives carrots, in hopes of breaking down their inhibitions; and Caligula, emperor of Rome for four years before his awful career was cut short by assassination, is said once to have fed the entire Senate on carrots in hopes of promoting an orgy.

Sweet potatoes – introduced to Europe from the Americas in the late 15^th century – were promptly adopted as aphrodisiacs. John Gerard, in his Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes (1597) includes a selection of helpful sweet-potato recipes (variously infused with wine, boiled with prunes, or roasted with oil, vinegar, and salt) and states that, along with strengthening and nourishing the body, they have the added bennie of promoting “bodily lust.” Henry VIII (six wives) was particularly fond of them, and in Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, the womanizing Falstaff bellows, “Let the sky rain potatoes!” he was hoping for sweet potatoes.

None of these do anything much. Science generally views all this aphrodisiacal hype with a cold eye, insisting that it’s all in our susceptible heads – except, just possibly, in the case of celery.

Celery – a relative of parsnips, carrots, parsley, dill, and Queen Anne’s lace – is a native of the Mediterranean and Middle East. The Egyptians used it to treat impotence. The Romans used it to treat constipation; they also wore wreaths of the leafy tops to alleviate hangovers. Pliny recommended it as a treatment for lumbago; he also claimed that celery, tossed in a fishpond, would cure sickly fish. A Compound of Celery was listed in the Dispensatory of the United States (1907) as a cure for insomnia, which just may have worked, given the Compound’s hefty content of alcohol and cocaine.

Madame de Pompadour, who thought it was an aphrodisiac, plied Louis XV with celery soup. In a backhanded sort of way, this may have made some sense: according to a trio of doctors, co-authors of Stay Young: Ten Proven Steps to Ultimate Health (2010), celery is a veritable vegetable Viagra. It contains androsterone, a steroid ordinarily found in human sweat and boar saliva. In people and boars, androsterone acts as a pheromone, causing males exuding it to be more attractive to females.

The problem is that celery, analyzed, only contains a tiny percentage of androsterone – and anyway, there’s no evidence so far that eating it boosts female-luring androsterone levels in human males (or boars.) Still, just in case, it might be worth a try to munch on a few celery stalks before making your move this Valentine’s Day.

Just remember to pair it with a couple of roses and a box of chocolates. ❖