Foods that turn you on

Anyone needing to spice up their love life need look no further than the refrigerator or kitchen cabinet.

Certain foods, such as strawberries, are well known as being aphrodisiacs, which is defined by Encyclopedia Britannica as forms of stimulation that may arouse sexual excitement. Others, like carrots and asparagus, are lesser known (at least to me).

Below is a list of aphrodisiac foods, courtesy gourmetsleuth.com. Apparently, many of the foods have become known as aphrodisiacs due to resembling male or female genitalia (think banana.)

Next time you have some alone time, with your honey, you may want to put the list to the test. A meal I may try is pasta with a pesto sauce made from pine nuts, served alongside wine, with a fruit salad (raspberries, strawberries, pineapples and bananas) for dessert.

Aniseed
Asparagus
Almond
Arugula
Asafetida
Avocado
Bananas
Basil
Broccoli Rabe (And Other Mustard Greens)
Caffeine
Carrots
Chocolate
Coffee
Coriander (Cilantro seed)
Fennel
Figs
Garlic (I don't know about this one. Garlic breath sure isn't much of a turn on!)
Ginger
Honey
Liquorice
Mustard
Nutmeg
Oysters
Pine Nuts
Pineapple
Raspberries and Strawberries
Truffles
Vanilla
Wine

For recipes using these ingredients and more detailed descriptions about why these foods are aphrodisiacs, click here.

Were you surprised by any food items on the list? Have you found these foods to be aphrodisiacal in the past, or do you think it's all folklore?