RTN: Pineapple Anthropology

[SFJoe]

RTN from 2007:

As I enjoyed a decadent meal of quail and pineapple last night in Tours, I thought that patients might be interested in a tidibit I came across while reading Sophie Coe’s America’s First Cuisines, an extremely interesting book about pre-Columbian foodstuffs, cooking, and much that is entwined with them (thanks, Connie!).

On the subject of why pineapple had such an iconic significance for Mayakovsky early in the last century, I found this illuminating:

Pineapple grows best in hot humid climates, as it was originally from Brazil and Paraguay and was later distributed over the South American continent by the Tupi-Guarani tribes as they expanded their territory

It is hard to think of a less plausible plant to cajole into fruiting under English conditions, but that is what the competitive gardeners of the British nobility succeeded in doing in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It was an abstruse and expensive business, calling for specialized buildings named pineries, which were built along side the vineries, where grew the grapes which also would not mature under sullen Northern European skies. Heat was provided by beds of manure and specialized furnaces, and every gardener had a secret formula for soil which would best bring his or her plants of Ananas comosus into fruit. The result of all this was that the pineapple became not just a fruit, but the embodiment of everything the nobility liked to think that it stood for—wealth, hospitality and friendship. Its likeness carved in wood became an architectural motif considered particularly suitable for entrance halls and dining rooms

By the 1820s pineapples could be imported from the West Indies on their plants, so that they became common, and therefore uninteresting to fashion pacesetters. In England it stopped being profitable to rent out pineapples as centerpieces for dinner tables (! sic), but in Russia, not reached by West Indian shipments, pineapples in champagne were the last word in luxurious extravagance until the beginning of the twentieth century.

There is much else of interest in Coe about pineapples alone, but I thought therapy habitués might find this macho/pedantic bit familiar, at least in tone:

“Columbus was the first European to eat a pineapple, which he did November 4, 1493 when he landed on the island of Guadaloupe on his second voyage. He gave a straightforward description of it, saying that cultivated pineapples were better than wild ones, which is not true, because there are no wild pineapples.”

Bad bottle?

 

[Jeff Grossman]

In England it stopped being profitable to rent out pineapples as centerpieces for dinner tables

Yes, there is a whole hostess-culture surrounding pineapples. They were, indeed, rented to put on dinner tables. They were also placed in a guest's bedroom, near the head of the bed, to welcome them. (It was moved towards the foot of the bed when the host wanted to gently suggest that it was time to depart.)

I have no certain origin-story for how the pineapple became associated with early 19th C English hosting but one food historian I met offered the following: The pineapple became associated with 18th C American (colonial) hospitality through the network of taverns along the roadside. Whenever the ships would arrive from the Caribbean bearing casks of rum, the ships also brought pineapples. So, a tavern would display a pineapple out front as a sign that their ship had come in and they did, indeed, have liquor for sale.

 

[Marc D]

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

In England it stopped being profitable to rent out pineapples as centerpieces for dinner tables

Yes, there is a whole hostess-culture surrounding pineapples. They were, indeed, rented to put on dinner tables. They were also placed in a guest's bedroom, near the head of the bed, to welcome them. (It was moved towards the foot of the bed when the host wanted to gently suggest that it was time to depart.)

I have no certain origin-story for how the pineapple became associated with early 19th C English hosting but one food historian I met offered the following: The pineapple became associated with 18th C American (colonial) hospitality through the network of taverns along the roadside. Whenever the ships would arrive from the Caribbean bearing casks of rum, the ships also brought pineapples. So, a tavern would display a pineapple out front as a sign that their ship had come in and they did, indeed, have liquor for sale.

In the South today it is quite common to see a pair of stone pineapples sit atop the entrance gate to a home, I guess as a symbol of welcoming.

Also I remember shopping for furniture in the outlet factories of western North Carolina and seeing pineapples carved from wood decorating the top of the bedposts in those 4 poster beds. I don't know if you can move the wood ones from the head to the foot in the case of unwanted guests.

So the tradition continues today, at least in some parts of the US.

 

[Levi Dalton]

Pine cones were a big deal to the Romans. Just saying. It is a similar shape.

 

[Levi Dalton]

Just reading about the Roman cadus, a large vessel for holding wine. The cadus was bigger than the amphora and in the shape of a pineapple.

 

[Cliff]

In German-speaking Europe, in 1750, a pineapple cost as much as a horse.

 

[slaton]

How times have changed.