Chocolate is truly one of life's most delicious pleasures. Its rich flavour and exquisite creamy texture hold an almost universal appeal to people of all ages. No-one, it seems, can resist the temptation; from the simplest of childhood's confections to the sophisticated cuisine of gourmets chocolate has become an indulgence the world over.

Chocolate was first introduced to the Western World just over 400 years ago when Spanish explorers brought the cocoa bean home from their expeditions to Mexico and South America. Known only as a drink in those times, it has only been available as an edible block of chocolate for the past 140 years.

As early as 600AD, the Central American maya tribe migrated deep into South America's northern region and established the first cocoa plantations in Yucatan. The fruit of the cocoa tree played an important part in ceremonial rituals and cocoa beans were offered to gods during puberty rites, marriages and funerals. Each year a prisoner was sacrificed to ensure a good harvest from the cocoa tree. This unfortunate victim was served a cup of chocolate which supposedly turned his heart into a cocoa bean; the heart was then ripped out and offered to the gods. Before the sowing of the crop, the tillers of the soil slept apart from their women for 13 nights so that the night before planting they could fully indulge their passions. As the first cocoa seed was placed in the soil a chosen few were appointed to sexually perform at the same time! Perhaps this ritual has some bearing on the fact that chocolate was considered an aphrodisiac for many years: