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It’s mystifying that we assign the celebration of love to St Valentine’s Day. In two separate years in 3 AD, Emperor Claudius II used February 14th to execute two men, both said to have been called Valentine.
14th February fell in the middle of the feast of Lupercalia. This was a jamboree whose main thrust was for a bunch of priests called Luperci to run naked around Rome beating women with thongs, in the recreation manner of the day.
But first they sacrificed some goats and a dog. Two of the Luperci were led to the altar, possibly representing the twin founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus. You’ll remember they were raised by a wolf (lupus), as can happen when your wicked uncle has tossed you into the Tiber. The foreheads of the Luperci were touched with a blooded knife, and the blood then wiped off with wool dipped in milk. All through this diverting exercise, the two Luperci were required to laugh heartily.
Naturally by now, the priests were highly stimulated. They all of them then ripped off their clothes, and surged throughout Rome whipping women with strips of the goats’ and dogs’ skins. Apparently the women lined up for this playful privilege, believing it would make them fertile.
If this programme of events wasn’t entertaining enough, there was also a precursor to today’s dating app. The women’s names were dropped into a receptacle. The lucky women would be paired up with whoever drew theirs out for a romp that lasted at least the duration of the three-day festival, and for life if they had found a suitable match.
I don’t feel any of this is anything to be celebrated with chocolate.
I am supporting the opposite and humdrum event from which comes the name ‘February’. It is drawn from the word ‘februum’, meaning purification or purge. This rite to prepare for the coming of Spring involved copious applications of salt. And spelt.
Spelt is a grain related to wheat. Greek mythology has it that it was a gift from Demeter, the goddess of agriculture. Demeter was also at one and the same time the sister and the consort of the god of gods, Zeus. (It is amazing what behaviour the ancients considered normal.)
I have a soft spot for spelt because it’s also called Dinkel Wheat, which is rather charming and something I might name a dog. It’s one of the earliest cereals, with evidence of its cultivation north east of the Black Sea going back as far as 5000 BC. By 500 BC, it was a common crop in southern Britain.
Recently, it has been enjoying a revival, being a cheap staple food filled with nutrients and often used in posh breads and pasta as a substitute for wheat. It’s thrumming with vitamins, nutrients and minerals and you can use it as you would arborio rice, risotto fashion.
But I appreciate that none of these facts, nor its connection to Lupercalia, deliver a Valentine’s Day charge. Chocolate is an aphrodisiac, spelt not so much.
The insatiable English monarch Charles II would agree. He ran a hedonistic court and Nell Gwyn, an actress who was his long-time mistress. In 1669, he spent two hundred and twenty nine pounds, ten shillings and eight pence on chocolate, compared to £6 that he spent on tea and probably nothing on spelt.
Chocolate’s association with Romance (as opposed to Lust), only goes back to 1868, when Richard Cadbury created one of his Fancy Box line in the shape of a heart, filling it with chocolate-coated fondants, creams and marzipan.
In the US, over 58 million pounds (26.3 million kilos) of chocolate are bought in the week leading up to Valentine’s Day. But in the UK, more Valentine’s Day money is spent on dining out than on chocolate, followed by flowers and lingerie.
Bad call. Chocolate, with its small amounts of anandamide targeting the brain in the manner of THC, is a far more effective romantic tool than a table-for-two, roses, or naughty knickers. Brits don’t need reminding that their enthusiastic indulgence in the celebratory Valentine spread, so often an Indian feast, usually impedes any subsequent expression of their Lupercalian instincts.
It’s hard being British (perfectly encapsulated in John Cleese’s excruciating speech as Archie in A Fish Called Wanda, caught naked but for a framed photograph. Rent the movie for Valentine’s Day for after the Indian feast. After all, you won’t be eating out).
Although this reticence doesn’t seem to stunt Sting. In the manner of Cyrano de Bergerac, he sent trumpeter Chris Botti on stage to serenade Trudi Styler, his very own funny Valentine, before taking over the spotlight himself.
To acknowledge the role of chocolate in romance without going overboard, I offer a consoling squidgy cake not unlike the Sticky Toffee Pudding that the Lake District’s beautiful Cartmel claims is theirs although it was actually invented by Frances Coulson of the Sharrow Bay Hotel on Ullswater. It’s based on reassuringly prim spelt but contains an Anglo Saxon measure of chocolate. It’s as easy to playfully whip up as any Lupercalian priest might wish.
Serves 8 (or you and your sweetie over several days)
240ml/1 cup water, boiling hot
1 ½ tablespoons instant espresso powder
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda/baking soda
12 to 14 Medjool dates, pitted and coarsely chopped
250g/8oz spelt flour
100g/3 ½ oz unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
¾ teaspoon salt
170g/6oz unsalted butter, softened
130g/4 ½ oz dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
Whipping cream (optional, but not really)
Preheat oven to 175C/350F and grease and flour a 23cm/9-inch springform cake tin.
In a bowl, stir together boiling hot water, espresso powder, vanilla, and 1 teaspoon baking soda. Add the dates, mashing them lightly with a fork, then steep until the liquid cools to room temperature, about 10 minutes.
In another bowl, whisk together spelt flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt.
With an electric mixer at medium-high speed, beat the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy then add the eggs, one at a time, beating till just combined.
Beat in the date mixture. The batter will curdle. No matter. Reduce beater speed to low and add flour, beating till just combined.
Pour batter into cake pan. Tap pan lightly on your countertop to settle batter, and bake until a skewer inserted into its centre comes out clean, 50 minutes to 1 hour.
Cool cake in pan on a rack 5 minutes, then remove from pan and cool on rack.
Best served warm, with a bowl of lightly whipped cream.
“Optional, but not really” - brilliant. Thank you Julia for this Valentine history and culinary lesson!