The original literal title means very little outside Mexico (it refers to the exact boiling temperature water needs to reach in order to make hot chocolate). Therefore, in France the title has been changed into "Bitter Chocolate", in Poland into "Quails in Rose Petals" and in Japan into "The Legend of the Rose Petal Sauce".
The film became the highest-grossing foreign-language film ever released in the United States at the time.
An aspiring filmmaker from Texas, who was not involved with the project, spent time on set, because he was in town shooting a small budget ($5,000) full-length feature film for the Spanish home video market. That young filmmaker was Robert Rodriguez, and the film was El Mariachi, which became a hit at Sundance and launched his career.
One of the most remarkable scenes is when Gertrude, played by Claudette Maillé, rides a horse with her clothes off. She states that she had no complexes because of the education and way of life she experienced while in France. "It was my first nude, the only thing that made me nervous, (and that has always bothered me), is that there were a lot of voyeurs, and then I was like, 'until they lock them up, I won't do the scene'. [...] When it was time to do it, it was a very tiring day, you do it thousands of times, especially the part of the horse, I had practiced a lot in all my free time, with the stuntman we were going to do the mounting on the horse, he and I knew each other very well and there was a lot of trust, and when we finished that day Arau told me 'You won the glory', and it is a scene that nobody forgets, and they told me 'You are the one with the horse'.," Maillé recalled.