Blood & Chocolate is the eleventh studio album by the English singer-songwriter Elvis Costello, and his ninth album with the Attractions—keyboardist Steve Nieve, bassist Bruce Thomas and drummer Pete Thomas (no relation). It was released on 15 September 1986 through Demon and Columbia Records. After mostly using outside musicians for his previous album King of America, Costello reunited the Attractions and his former producer Nick Lowe for Blood & Chocolate. Recorded in London during a period of heightened tensions between Costello and the Attractions, the tracks were recorded quickly, mostly live in first takes, while the band were set up simultaneously in the same room at Olympic Studios. The Pogues' bassist Cait O'Riordan sang backing vocals on two tracks.

A departure from the roots rock of King of America, Blood & Chocolate musically and lyrically recalls Costello's early works, particularly This Year's Model (1978). Featuring a garage-sounding production, it is a straightforward rock and roll album with revenge and guilt-driven lyrics and imagery drawn from nightmarish worlds. After King of America was credited to "the Costello Show", Blood & Chocolate was credited once again to "Elvis Costello and the Attractions". The cover artwork is a painting by Costello himself titled "Napoleon Dynamite".

Released only seven months after King of America, Blood & Chocolate was Costello's lowest-charting album yet, reaching number 16 in the UK and number 84 in the US. Both of its over six-minute singles—"Tokyo Storm Warning" and "I Want You"—performed poorly. At the time, music critics felt the album was substandard compared to Costello's previous works, although others felt it was a return to form for the artist. Retrospective reviews consider Blood & Chocolate one of Costello's finest, being praised for its simplicity and performances. Following the album's release and supporting tour, Costello did not work with the Attractions again for eight years. It has been reissued several times with bonus tracks, including in 1995 and 2002.

Elvis Costello recorded his tenth studio album King of America in Los Angeles between July and September 1985. A roots rock and Americana album, it was recorded in collaboration with T Bone Burnett and various American session musicians dubbed "the Confederates". Costello had intended for his regular backing band, the Attractions, to appear on half of the album, but by the time they arrived half of the album was already completed. The Attractions were upset at their sidelining, leading to tense sessions; they ultimately appeared on only one track, "Suit of Lights". Released in February 1986, King of America sold poorly and was Costello's first album since My Aim Is True (1977) to miss the UK top 10. The album's poor commercial performance led Costello to write songs more akin to his early work with the Attractions, namely This Year's Model (1978) and Armed Forces (1979).

Only six months after the Los Angeles sessions for King of America, Costello entered Olympic Studios in London with the Attractions—the keyboardist Steve Nieve, the bassist Bruce Thomas and the drummer Pete Thomas (no relation)—to record an album. The musician Nick Lowe acted as producer for the first time in five years, while Colin Fairley was engineer. Lowe was reportedly brought back due to his history with the band—he had produced Costello's first four albums with the Attractions—and his ability to capture the raw sound Costello desired for the project. Costello wrote new songs using both guitar and simply beating his hands on a table to find rhythms; "Blue Chair", "I Hope You're Happy Now" and "Next Time Round" were held over from the King of America sessions. The songs fit the simplistic style of his working relationship with the Attractions, often only featuring two or three chords. A one-off session at London's Eden Studios with Jimmy Cliff yielded a track called "Seven Day Weekend" for the film Club Paradise (1986).

The recording sessions lasted from March to May 1986. With tensions still high between Costello and the Attractions, the goal was to record the tracks as quickly as possible before the animosity between Costello and the band became so severe they would have to scrap the entire project. The band set up in the studio similar to a rehearsal space, reportedly up to 25 feet between the bass and drums, and used monitor speakers rather than headphones, meaning there was little separation between the instruments. Costello remembered: "This made for a booming, murky sound that made subtlety impossible." The author Graeme Thomson argued: "It was a unique approach, essentially like recording a live concert in a cavernous studio with a few microphones dotted around the room." The album was recorded at concert-level volume in a way Costello felt suited the material. The band recorded most of the songs live in first takes, taking no more than three; overdubs were limited to lead or harmony vocal retakes. Costello stated in 1995: "We set up and played as loud as we did on stage. It didn't really sound like This Year's Model, but the component parts were just the four of us, and we did very few overdubs. We played as much a combo sound as possible."

The experience did little to ease the tensions in the band. Lowe remembered it was "a much more uptight situation ... There wasn't such a gang feeling." Nevertheless, Lowe admitted to encouraging the tensions, believing they "added to" the recording environment. Lowe also provided acoustic guitar on several numbers. Costello used his Telecaster guitar, which he felt gave his parts "a very harsh edge". He also restricted Nieve's parts to organ and piano, with zero solos. Costello's then-girlfriend Cait O'Riordan, the bassist for the Pogues, was present during recording, providing backing vocals on "Poor Napoleon" and "Crimes of Paris", and co-wrote "Tokyo Storm Warning" with Costello. The band also recorded a cover of Little Willie John's "Leave My Kitten Alone" (1959), which was left off the final album.

Departing from the roots rock of King of America, Blood & Chocolate is a rock 'n' roll and hard rock record, with a back-to-basics organ and guitar-led sound reminiscent of This Year's Model. In his book The Words and Music of Elvis Costello, the author James E. Perone describes the album as "noisy, messy, loose and at times under-rehearsed sounding". The album has also been classified as new wave and identified by later reviewers as featuring an early grunge sound. Other writers for Stereogum said the record offers a "terrific pub-rocking gut punch". Joe Pelone of punknews.org summarised: "Blood & Chocolate is a lot of things. On some tracks, it's a return to early Costello's hard charged literate punk. Sometimes it combines that with the pop sensibilities Costello cultivated over the years." Thomson argues that the album title, Blood & Chocolate, "perfectly summed up the texture of the music".