Richard Cadbury invented the first Valentine’s Day box of chocolates. In 1868, Cadbury, whose British family manufactured chocolate, came up with the idea to sell their ‘fancy chocolates’, known today as assortments, in decorative boxes he designed himself. The first box had Richard’s blond daughter holding a kitten and smiling sweetly. Each box had a small picture on the front that children could cut out and preserve in scrapbooks. The heart-shaped boxes, often with cupids and rosebuds on them, were highly beloved. Even when the chocolates were over, people would use them to store jewellery or save mementos such as love letters.
Valentine’s Day is actually named for two different Roman saints, both called Valentine and both utterly unconnected to romantic love. Though legend persists that the original St. Valentine was a priest who performed illegal marriages for the Emperor Claudius’ soldiers, there’s no evidence to suggest this ever happened. The first mention of St. Valentine’s Day as a romantic holiday appeared in the writings of Chaucer in 1382. With the medieval period came a new focus on illicit but chaste courtly love, and it is here that we see some of the familiar iconography begin to appear. Knights would give roses to their maidens and celebrate their beauty in songs from afar. But sugar was still a precious commodity in Europe, so there was no talk of exchanging candy gifts.
By the 1840s, the notion of Valentine’s Day as a holiday to celebrate romantic love had taken over most of the English-speaking world. It was Cupid’s golden age: The prudish Victorians adored the notion of courtly love and showered each other with elaborate cards and gifts. Into this love-crazed fray came Richard Cadbury, scion of a British chocolate manufacturing family and responsible for sales at a crucial point in his company’s history. Cadbury had recently improved its chocolate making technique so as to extract pure cocoa butter from whole beans, producing a more palatable drinking chocolate than most Britons had ever tasted. This process resulted in an excess amount of cocoa butter, which Cadbury used to produce many more varieties of what was then called “eating chocolate.” Richard recognized a great marketing opportunity for the new chocolates and started selling them in beautifully decorated boxes that he himself designed.
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