Historians credit Richard Cadbury, son of chocolatier John Cadbury, with the invention in 1861 of heart-shaped boxes filled with chocolates. The box—after the candy was consumed—was intended to store sentimental love letters or locks of hair, which were common practices in the Victorian era.

Of course chocolate has been around much longer than heart-shaped boxes for Valentine’s Day. When first domesticated over 5,000 years ago in present-day Ecuador, cocoa beans were used to prepare a bitter-tasting beverage that was thought to give strength and sexual prowess to the drinker, according to Wikipedia. In fact, the Latin name for the tree that produces cocoa beans is Theobroma cacao L. which means “Food of Gods.”