For one night last week, the kitchen fridge went into shock. The vegetables which are usually stored in those deep shelves at the bottom of the fridge, were usurped to make way for several boxes of posh chocolates. Housemates muttered threats of breaking and entering, but the boxes managed to survive intact overnight.
The sampling team, comprising Elva, Louise, Tessa, and Marie-Louise, duly arrived the following afternoon to break open the boxes and discuss the merits of chocolate, love, and Valentine's Day. We all admitted to feeling a bit daunted as we gathered around the table, gazing into the several open boxes of hand-made chocolates, which awaited our attention. On the recommendation of The Irish Times food critic, John McKenna, we all clutched palate-cleansing glasses of sparkling wine. Also on the table was orange juice, coffee, water - and a tape recorder.
So do women really still want to be given chocolate as a token of love? "Oh yes," chorused Tessa, Louise, and Elva. Marie-Louise was too busy trying to decide which box we should start with. "I'd never buy myself good chocolates. It would seem too sinful," Elva said. "I'd buy myself one or two the odd time as a treat," Louise admitted.
"Definitely, the best thing is to be given them. It wouldn't feel right buying yourself a box - boxes are gifts, really," was Tessa's view. "Let's face it, chocolate is associated with sex," Elva stated. "So it's a bit of an ego-boost to get given some."
Each box was passed reverently around the table in turn, like the church collection boxes of old, which remained under your nose until you paid your dues. Some of the chocolates had no "instructions," as Marie-Louise, put it: no pictures and descriptions of what lay within. Tessa and Louise both agreed with her that they preferred to know what was in them.
Druid chocolates, all in frilly little papers, were among the first to be sampled. "They smell good," said Tessa, the most experienced chocolate-eater among us. She tried a few. "They're nice, but they all taste much the same; the fresh cream taste takes over," was her verdict.
She was much more interested in the Torc Truffles, whopping "golf balls," as Marie-Louise described them. They dwarfed their smaller, prettier-looking Druid sisters. "Less in a box looks more luxurious," Louise stated. "Size counts," Elva said. Someone giggled. The truffles all looked more or less the same, but they all tasted very different: dense rich layers of praline, which disappeared too quickly for a more detailed forensic report. "Very good, but one at a time is more than enough."
What about the name, Torc Truffles? "It makes me think of pigs truffle hunting in the forest," this reporter observed, to general outcry. "No, no, no," MarieLouise explained patiently. "You've got it all wrong. Truffles are really expensive. Think pricey, not pigs."
The only box which was not predominantly white in colour and with a lid that lifted off, was the brown Bewleys one, with its brown plastic tray inside. "It doesn't look as posh as the others," Louise said flatly. "Don't we get fussy fast?" Elva observed. "If someone brought this box to dinner, we'd all think it was lovely, but it doesn't look so good among the others."
Tessa was examining the Butlers chocolates, which, like the Bewleys box, had nine chocolates apiece. "The Butlers actually look much the same," she pointed out, "except the box is much nicer." Presentation - or should that be packaging - matters, was the verdict.
And what of the chocolates themselves? "I like these," said Elva, trying the Butlers. "Mmm," went Louise. Meanwhile, Tessa was unwrapping the foil cone of a Bewleys chocolate. She left half of it. "It tastes very traditional," she said. No matter how posh the chocolates, there are always a few that get left behind: the strawberry and coffee creams scenario.
The Chez Emily chocolates, which were by far the most varied looking - tiny moulded elephants, solid rounds studded with nuts, delicate shells dusted with cocoa, and nameless other wonders - of all the boxes, were voted the best any of us had ever eaten. They all looked gorgeous, like the picture-book chocolates you see princesses scoffing in fairy tales. And each one tasted amazingly good, and different, yet not too sweet. "Every one is a surprise," marvelled Marie-Louise, who was doing careful surgery with a sharp knife, so we could see a cross-section of every wicked interior.
Once we had tasted the Chez Emily chocolates, my panel more or less went on strike. They had found sublimity and continued to revisit the Chez Emily box at regular intervals for the rest of the evening. They could not be persuaded to have a second sample of any of the other boxes, the left-over contents of which were made up into goody-bags to be brought home to the left-behind spouses.
Housemates sneaked in and took places at the table and chocolates from "Shay Emily," as they were renamed ("She's obviously a relation of Shay Healy," Elva suggested). The volume rose. Ella Fitzgerald was taken off the CD player, and The Best of The Pogues went on. There was much laughter. Fuelled by an afternoon of chocolate tasting, the talk moved effortlessly onto love, sex, and babies. At which point, the taperecorder was hijacked and switched off.
Tokens of love from Druid, Butlers, Torc Truffles, Bewleys and Chez Emily. Chocolate's "association with sex" makes it the perfect gift to women