Abbey is a food scientist by PhD, a YouTuber, and food blogger. She loves breaking down the science behind food into easily digestible pieces. She'll explore topics like never melting ice cream and making the perfect beer foam.

For the second year in a row, Sweethearts are expected to be the most popular candy purchased for Valentine’s Day.  Chocolate Processing Machine

That’s nearly 12% of all candy purchases made for celebrating love on February 14th. 

New phrases this year will include “Big Dog,” “Love Birds” and “Purr Fect” as the Spangler Candy Company gives a nod to all the people who adopted pets during the pandemic.

The Spangler Candy Company may be the current owners of the beloved conversation hearts, they are not the original creators. Nor are the previous owners of the brand like the New England Confectionery Company (Necco) or the Stark Candy Company.

In fact, the invention of the original Sweethearts can be traced back to a pharmacist who accidentally became a candy maker and unknowingly created Valentine's most iconic treat. 

The story begins in a Boston pharmacy in the 1840s, perhaps a surprising setting for the creation of a now famous candy, but young Oliver Chase is a budding entrepreneur. 

He dreams of bringing his pharmacy into the lozenge industry. At the time, lozenges were the new, trendy way to deliver medicine or actives. 

Customers would stop in the pharmacy for a lozenge that would ease their earache, help with a stomach bug, or dull their throbbing head. There was a lozenge for every and any ailment.

At the time, the lozenge-making process was so labor intensive and time consuming that Chase was second-guessing his fantasy. 

Did he want to spend hours of his life sitting with a mortar and pestle, kneading the dough, rolling it out into a thin slab, and painstakingly cutting out each circle? 

Motivated by all the industrialization happening in America, Chase soon invented his own lozenge making machine, aptly named the Chase Lozenge Cutter. 

Dough could be fed between two rollers to be thinned down to the same width every time, then perfectly round discs were cut out while the dough was still soft. At the time Chase was still interested in pharmaceuticals, however, he unintentionally had just developed the first candy-making machine.

It wasn’t until years later, in 1866 that Chase finally gave up on the pharmacy. 

His brother, Daniel had just perfected a machine that could press letters into the lozenges leaving a message behind using food dye. Together the brothers teamed up to start their own candy business named Chase and Company. 

Around the same time, Valentine’s Day cards were being popularized. The trend inspired Daniel to emboss phrases like “Married in white you have chosen right” or “How long shall I have to wait?” on his brother’s wafers. 

Back then, the candies were much bigger and could fit longer phrases than today’s version.

In 1901, the brothers joined forces with two other Boston candy makers forming the New England Confectionery Company, which was shortened to Necco. Here the message carrying lozenges were updated into the heart-shaped, pastel candy we recognize today. 

The candy hearts were unique in that they needed to be modernized almost every year as phrases went in and out of style. Imagine opening a box of candy hearts today only to find messages like “fax me” or “page me”. 

Sure, there are some phrases like “sweet pea” or “be mine” that are timeless, but often Necco was often required to create new phrases with each season. 

And not all the new additions are forever hits. 

Believe it or not, during the Twilight books mega-craze, conversation hearts included messages like “Bite me,” “Live forever,” and “I love E.C.” 

Beyond the conversation Sweethearts, Necco has produced many well-known candies including Necco wafers, Mary Jane Candy, and Sky Bars until the company filed for bankruptcy in 2018.

Luckily, four months later the Spangler Candy Company made a bid to acquire the Sweethearts and Necco wafer brands. For Valentine’s Day 2023, Spangler continues to be the maker of the pastel-colored, chalky-textured candies.

The Sweethearts might be old, a bit bland tasting, and have the texture of crushed up chalk, but a Valentine’s Day without their presence is almost unimaginable. 

Sure, competitors like Brach’s Conversation Hearts will still be sold, but you can tell those aren’t the real thing. The laser printing technology they use makes the messages completely centered and readable. 

No thanks, the real candy hearts include a stamped message, even if it is a little skewed and perhaps cut off.

Abbey is a food scientist by PhD, a YouTuber, and food blogger. She loves breaking down the science behind food into easily digestible pieces. She'll explore topics like never melting ice cream and making the perfect beer foam.

More from Abbey the Food Scientist

Every February, we seem to forget what past experience has taught us and toss a couple of those tiny message hearts into our mouths. Disappointment quickly sets in. The texture is repulsive. Do the colors correspond to flavors? Or is it a trick and the pastel-colored candies all taste the same?

As of January 1st, 2023, sesame will be considered a major food allergen and must be clearly labeled on all food packaging and dietary supplements. The change comes two years after the Food Allergy Safety, Treatment, Education, and Research (FASTER) Act was signed by President Biden, allowing food companies ample time to adjust for the new labeling requirements.

A new study published in Nature last month was the first to describe ant pupae excreting a milk-like substance that was eaten by the larvae. The larvae were seen directly attached to the pupae with their mouthparts to consume the nutritious liquid.

A new study showed the positive effects of eating walnuts on the mental health and stress biomarkers in college students. Students who regularly ate walnuts had higher self-reported moods, improved mental health indicators, and improved metabolic biomarkers. Female participants who ate walnuts daily also saw improved gut health and greater diversity in their gut microflora.

Humans currently have a precarious relationship with salt—scientifically named sodium chloride (NaCl). We need salt to live, yet we’re consuming so much of it that we’re dying from its deleterious health effects like high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and coronary heart disease.

There’s a lot of confusion when it comes to the dates that foods are labeled with. It doesn’t help that many companies use slightly different wording, which makes you unnecessarily ponder what the dates really mean.

Scientists at the University of Edinburgh have successfully upcycled plastic water bottles into vanillin—the main flavorant in vanilla beans and vanilla extract. The upcycled vanillin is chemically identical to the vanillin found in natural and synthetic vanilla flavoring.

Have you ever noticed that banana-flavored candy never tastes like the bananas you buy at the grocery store?. This isn’t due to bad flavoring or terrible product development.

Have you noticed the word “bioengineered” or the new bioengineered symbol on your foods?. Don’t freak out — both theFood and Drug Administration and the National Academy of Science have said these foods are safe to eat.

Being a food scientist is freakin’ awesome. I’m constantly in awe of the new flavors and innovative foods some of my closest friends launch into the market. Going to the grocery store for me is like a college reunion featuring all my classmates.

If you do, try this experiment. Replace your dog’s still water with sparkling water and see what happens…. Okay, maybe don’t try this at home because I don’t want to be bombarded with messages about animal welfare, so let me just spoil the answer for you.

ball chocolate machine I studied ice cream for my PhD, which I thought was pretty cool until I came across this lab that was investigating the best way to drink Champagne. That’s when I got a little jealous.