Food, Fertility, and Romance: The Evolution of Valentine’s Day

For couples on Valentine’s Day, no celebration feels complete without an intimate dining experience—whether in a Michelin star restaurant or a candlelit diner over a Big Mac. No Valentine’s is finished without politely stuffing food into our mouths and hoping our partner still finds us attractive afterward. That link between food and the holiday goes back a long way, long before Hallmark cards, prix fixe menus, and Katy Perry. In ancient Rome, the midFebruary festival Lupercalia honored the god of fertility, Lupercus. The she-wolf Lupa, associated with Lupercus and the fable, famously breastfed the two most essential brothers in Roman mythology, Romulus and Remus—who, after a minor fraternal dispute (one killed the other), went on to found the city of Rome. As pagan rituals were suppressed and absorbed into Christian practices, medieval writers started to romanticize Valentine's Day.  

Several centuries later and 684 miles away from Rome, Carole Faivre, in a book chapter with an incredibly long name––“Sex, Food and Valentine’s Day: A Linguistic Analysis of Valentine’s Day Menus in a Selection of Parisian Restaurants at Present,”––uncovers these underlying themes persisting in the city of love and bread (Paris). As the holiday acquired romantic connotations and champagne became the new breast milk, 19 th century French male admirers began a new tradition: binge-drinking champagne out of ballet dancers' shoes. After all, nothing makes a person want to chug a bubbly drink out of a shoe more than Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake.” To fill the spiritual void of modernity, the practice was resurrected by luxury shoemaker Louboutin, who partnered with Champagne house Piper-Heidsieck. The duo released Le Rituel, a much-needed box set containing a crystal stiletto and a bottle of champagne, allowing everybody to finally kick back after a long day and drink $500 alcohol out of our favorite Cinderella slipper.

Once your partner finally puts the shoe down, we can move on to another gem in Faivre’s work: a brief foray into the fine-dining classic—the truffle. Traditionally found by pigs and hunted by dogs, truffles; rarity accounts for their luxurious quality, and, as a result, they become a Parisian must-have on the Valentine's Day menu. However, French food laws dictate that food must be labeled according to its geographical origin. Unfortunately, the truffle is not nicknamed after the pig that found it. This turned truffles into a space to express one’s nationality, rather than gratitude for pigs as dinners forced customers to choose between two common truffles: one from France and the other from China. While many Parisians preferred the French over the latter, restaurants had a clever marketing scheme up their sleeve. Restaurants began selling these glorious pig findings under their Latin names–Tuber indicum and Tuber melanosporum. 

From breastfeeding to taking shots out of stilettos, Valentine's Day eating rituals continue to help build new relationships and strengthen existing ones.