Cupboard love is love pretended to the cook in the hopes that a meal or snack will result. Although the strategy has been exploited since the invention of the cookie jar, the term itself did not emerge until the middle of the eighteenth century. This practice of feigning affection was also known in the eighteenth century by a less endearing name, lump-love, the idea again being that the true object of the pretender’s desire is a lump of food.