April 13, 2021 • 46 mins
Today, pineapples are a common (and delicious) produce item found in grocery stores and markets across the world -- but not too many centuries ago, a single pineapple could cost the equivalent of over $8,000. In the first part of this two-part episode, the guys delve into the bizarre story of Europe's pineapple mania, attempting to discover just what made this fruit so insanely popular... and why they're so insanely cheap today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. That's our super producer, Casey Pegram.
That's our guest producer Andrew Howard. Uh they called me
Ben because that's my name. Today's episode is about bar none,
my favorite fruit. It's your favorite fruit, absolutely Okay, so
(00:49):
we're gonna have to get into you know, your your
top five. I have to ask pineapple is the fruit
in question today? Long been considered a sign of of affluence,
you know, throughout history. I'm a big fan of pineapple.
Tub but how do you like it? It It seems like
an awful lot to harvest a pineapple and it's you know,
(01:09):
raw form. Yeah, so there there are a number of
ways you can prepare. Oh your knowl that's me so there.
There are a number of ways that I personally like pineapple.
I'll put it in smoothies. I'm a person who buys
the whole pineapple and then does the cutting boring thing.
You know. Um, I've made pineapple upside down cake before.
(01:31):
I'm not a big cake guy, but my mom loves it.
What about you? Where does pineapple sit in your hierarchy
of fruitst Well, first, really really have to ask you
do you have a designated pineapple machette? But you have
to use for because it's I mean it's like a
it's like hacking into a coconut. Man, it's just got
the spines, and I mean it's scary looking to me.
How do you go about this? Yeah, I use a
(01:55):
I use a typical kitchen knife and you slice off
the sides and then you can do a little old
twist top thing with that stalk, which is always fun.
So maybe I'm making a little bit more out of
it than it really is. Probably not as dangerous of fruit,
perhaps as I have have have envisioned or perhaps had
nightmares about. I'm not scared of pineapple, Ben, I don't
want anyone to think that going in. I love pineapple.
(02:16):
I guess I'm just more of a dull pineapple rings
in the can kind of guy. But you're right, fresh
pineapple is absolutely delicious. Love a pineapple upside down cake,
very good in a smoothie. Love it as a frozen
yogurt topping. You know, a little kind of chunked up pineapples,
you drop a little bit on that with some of
that syrup and it's absolutely chef's kiss um. Pineapple for
(02:37):
me is probably I like strawberries the best, and then
I would say pineapple is probably three second. I like,
you know, mixed berries, like a like a blueberry raspberry
what blueberry type situation you know, as far as smoothies,
But clearly pineapple is much beloved by not only yourself, Ben,
but uh, historical royals throughout you know, time immemorial. Yeah,
(03:02):
it's crazy when you think about it, because if you
live in many places in the world, you can stroll
to your local grocery store and get a pineapple for
a pretty low price. But back in the day, the
best way to say it is, having a pineapple was
much more like having a Rolex Rolls Royce than it
was like having having ingredients for a smoothie or a
(03:25):
yogurt topping. And that's something that baffled us. Pineapples were
a symbol, and there's still a symbol today in certain
cultures for certain things. But for about two and a
half centuries, about two hundred and fifty years, pineapples became
a symbol of luxury, of opulence. If you really wanted
to flex on someone. Never mind your military insignia or
(03:50):
your signa ring just dropped by, you know, go by
the the next ballroom gathering with a pineapple on your arm. Yeah,
you know, maybe like hat some sort of chained to
it so you can wear it around like a handbag. Um,
it's definitely an accessory in that respect, right, it's like, hey,
look at me, I have a pineapple, so the way
people maybe flex their tesla's or something these days. But
(04:12):
the history of the pineapple is really fascinating. One Christopher
Columbus brought you know, in the same way he quote
unquote discovered America. Right, Okay, let's not hot take Christopher
Columbus here, we're not here for that. But you know,
he wasn't really looking for America. He just kind of
stumbled upon it, which I guess counts is discovery. But
he also sort of stumbled upon the pineapple um in
(04:32):
that it was something that was available exclusively in South America,
wasn't something you'd find in Europe. Um. So he, during
his you know, numerous voyages to the New World, brought
them back to Spain and it became very very popular because, uh,
(04:54):
there's some descriptions of the flavor we're gonna get into
that I find not only a little uh kind of
cringe e, but just it's just kind of shows where
people's heads were as far as these things and the
flavor profiles in general at the time. But also you know,
they were beautiful kind of right. They're very arresting looking fruits.
Like I said, for me, I maybe interpreted that as
sort of like like danger. But yeah, it definitely is
(05:18):
like something that you know, has a design equality to
It's got a certain symmetry and I kind of like
this you know, scaly uh skin, and then the like
the way the top kind of bunches up into these
you know, weird little sprigs. And people were taken with
it visually, and it became the subject of a lot
of paintings and still live people were incorporating into design
(05:38):
features and carving wooden furniture, and like you said, Ben,
it even became like an insignia for some houses, you know,
or families of of great opulence and also a sign
of hospitality that you might see even today in some
older you know, manner esque hotels. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it.
(05:59):
I do want to start from the offset, saying that
this will end up being more than one episode at
least our exploration of the pineapple. We consider this fruit
unique because it is it's the only edible bromeliad, right, Like,
I don't think you should give yourself a tough time
(06:20):
about feeling like maybe the pineapple is a little bit
intimidating because the pineapple is the only food known to
contain something called bromelion. You know how they say like
citric acid can have an effect on you on your
mouth if you eat too much. Pineapple does have citric acid,
(06:42):
but it also has this enzyme that literally digest protein.
So it can hurt to eat this because that enzyme
when you're eating pineapple is digesting the inside skin of
your mouth. That wow, I've never thought about that. Is
this something that maybe certain people might be more affittible
two or more sensitive to I've never noticed that. Well,
(07:04):
you know, I wonder too if this is something maybe
there's a pineapple allergy. But I'm wondering also if maybe
it's a it's a thing where you have to be
moderate in your enjoyment. Maybe there's a cumulative effect totally.
It's sort of like when you when you say that
sweet and low gives you cancer, It's like, well, maybe
it gave some rats cancer when they fed it to
(07:24):
them NonStop for like weeks on end, right exactly. Not
to say that you shouldn't be wary of your sweetener choices.
I'm just saying it's a you know, it's it's all
about moderation and context. Yes, for the humans of the audience,
for fretty rast in the audience, completely different situations, but
everybody so. So the thing is, we we talked about
(07:49):
how pineapples are relatively inexpensive. Now, so the average cost
for a pound of pineapple in the US is usually
gonna be around two dollars and seventy five cents, which
is not bad. But in the time period we're talking
about today, ridiculous historians, a single pineapple costs the equivalent
(08:13):
of eight thousand dollars. And I've never I don't know
about you, man, but have you ever seen those They're
these fruits in Japan, various types that are enormously expensive,
including like melons that are purposely grown in sort of
a rounded square shape, and and they look good. I mean,
I don't I don't object to melons, but I certainly
(08:36):
don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on fruit, So
to me it's mind boggling that someone would spend eight
thousand dollars. But as you'll see, they were not really
buying the fruit itself. They were buying the idea that
are represented the idea of being expensive and elite. I
(08:56):
would argue that pineapple might be like the n f
T of of this era. You know, maybe they're they're
buying the concept of like ownership that they can like
flaunt and say this is mine and the only I
can eat it, and you can't have any. Yeah, yeah,
maybe that's not a bad comparison. This is the thing.
(09:17):
If you travel to an older hotel or even a
newer one, you next time you do, because I know
we all want to start traveling again. Next time you
travel and you find yourself at a hotel, look around
the lobby, look around your room, and you might just
find a picture of a pineapple somewhere nearby. Why is that? Knuel? Yeah,
(09:39):
I mentioned at the top of show the idea of
especially in like kind of more classic, you know, manner
style hotels, you might see this being more prevalent because
it would be literally a holdover from you know, when
it was originally a very popular insignia of hospitality, before
it even became a symbol of this great wealth or whatever.
But you're right, man, I mean it's almost like one
(10:00):
of those things where even newer hotels will will kind
of sneak it in almost as a nod to the
history of you know, the hospitality industry. Right, Yeah. Yeah,
it's a complicated symbol. The more we unpack it, we
know that the pineapple, as you said, Noel, has function
originally in the West as a kind of symbol of
(10:23):
hospitality instead of royalty. But it also has a lot
of it's got a lot of dark stuff wrapped up
in that symbolism to centuries of pillaging and colonization. It's
also a newcomer, relatively speaking to the European sphere. Up
(10:43):
until what the fifteenth century or so, pineapples were unknown.
People of course, in South America enjoyed the pineapple. It
was very familiar fruit. If you went to Brazil at
this time, you would have seen it and people would
have known about it for hundreds and hundreds of years.
But it wasn't until crystal ball Cologne. This is one
(11:06):
of those facts you learn about him in school that
was actually true. It wasn't until Cristal ball Cologne. Christopher
Columbus came face to face with this fruit in fourteen
ninety three when he and his crew discovered a Caribbean
village that consumed pineapple. So unlike North America, this is
something that he actually did discover for Europeans. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
(11:30):
and I get we give we give Christopher Columbus a
bit of a hard time, you know, probably because of
the light genocide stuff, But we discussed all this. I
think this is a pretty well established There's also a
great episode of The Sopranos. I'm sorry I keep harping
on The Sopranos on all of our shows lately because
I just recently wrapped my bi annual rewatch. But there's
one particular episode called Christopher that was actually written by
(11:52):
Michael Imperiola, who plays the character Christopher on the show.
But it's about the Christopher Columbus Parade in New Jersey
and and the kind of a turf war that developed
between the Italian American population in Jersey and the Native
American population who obviously think Christopher Columbus as a monster. Uh.
And they literally have like a clash in the streets
(12:14):
and like the Native American contingent are burning effigies of
him and stuff, and it ends up like a slush.
He gets thrown at somebody and and and you know,
just all hell breaks loose. Yeah, and that's that's based
on a real thing. There was a segment of the
Italian American population who felt that Christopher Columbus was a
(12:36):
very important part of their cultural history was being unfairly malied.
That's exactly right, and that's what the episode goes into.
So it's a lot about identity politics and things. It's
it's a little ham fist. It doesn't hold up quite
uh as as well as one might hope, but it's
definitely an interesting time capsule. And I forget the guy's name,
but we've talked about this in other episodes of Ridiculous History.
And forgive the sidebar, but the gentleman who plays the
(12:59):
single tier crying Native American figure in the famous recycling
you know campaign, which was essentially started by the big
corporations to convince you know, regular consumers that pollution was
their fault. Uh, that guy's not even Native American he's
actually Italian. Um. And that comes up in the episode
(13:19):
where they're trying to like blackmail the Native American group
by saying, we're gonna we're gonna blow the lid off this.
We're gonna tell everybody that your guy isn't actually Native
American at all, he's Italian like us. But it turns
out that everyone pretty much already knows that. But you're right,
then let's just give him credit where credit is that
he did, you know, essentially stumble across the pineapple. But
(13:40):
isn't it a situation where it was like they were
offered either like a dish containing human flesh or a pineapple,
and they chose the pineapple. Is that a myth? It
seems a myth, like, well, it's it's um, let's say
it's an historical legend, because there's not documentation proving that.
(14:00):
But yeah, the story goes that the crew was offered
two choices. They could have pineapple or they could have
a stew, and the stew contained human body parts. So
they went for the pineapple, probably with a little bit
of a little bit of hesitation. But then as they
had a bite of this delicious fruit, they said, this
(14:21):
is amazing, and they stocked up on pineapples and brought
them back, as you said, to Spain, where it's spread
throughout the aristocratic classes. And this is where the idea
of pineapples becoming synonymous with or symbolic of hospitality comes from.
It comes from those trips to the Caribbean. According to
(14:42):
the World Encyclopedia of Food, travelers would go to these
islands and they would discover that if someone in the
native community had a pineapple hanging by the door, they
that meant that they would welcome strangers. This was a
house it was okay to visit. And uh, you know,
(15:03):
they talked about this, played the game and telephone and
these trips back in New York. So by the time
they finally get off the ship on the return trip
to Europe, they have cemented in their minds the idea
that a pineapple is sort of a high class symbol
of hospitality. And royalty loved this, by the way. Yeah,
and then even it goes even further. During colonial times,
(15:25):
sea captains would mark their return home by spearing a
pineapple on a fence post. Uh, and it kind of
gave a sign to the friends and family of the
captain that he was home safe and were prepared to
receive visitors right, right. And this explains something that I
(15:46):
had always had a question about. Remember, in many places
where I've traveled, I would be walking up to a
building and there would be these pillars or columns that had,
to my mind, in explicably had pineapples carved somewhere on
the pillar or somewhere at the top of the column.
And this is like a well known addition to entrances,
(16:12):
at least in the world of architecture. So it literally
made a mark in stone upon numerous cultures throughout the world.
Let's talk about pineapple mania. I think it's I don't
think it's hyperbole to call it that. So Christopher Columbus,
he comes back from his second voyage to the America's
(16:33):
in and he's brought along a bunch of cool stuff.
He's got pumpkins, he's got tobacco, he's got tomatoes, he's
got a couple of really chill parrots. But most importantly,
he has pineapples. And I don't think he had any
idea how popular these would become, right, he just had
(16:54):
them kind of tossed in there with all the other stuff.
Parents are never chilled open by the way. Parrots are
always aggressive, and they stare deeply into your soul and
they see you, they see the darkness inside of you,
and they want to to come at you. I feel
like I feel like it depends on the parrot. I've
known some just like people. I've known some wonderful parrots
(17:15):
and some just monsters staring into the abyss, my friend
the abyss stairs back. Sorry I have I'm triggered by parrots. Um.
But yeah, the pineapples were a huge deal. So the
King of Spain, Ferdinand the Second, ended up being kind
of the standard bear for this first wave of pineapple craze. Right,
we talked about the hospitality stuff that was to come
(17:37):
a little bit later. Um, this is the very first
time anyone is seen a pineapple. And we're not joking
when we say a pineapple, because all of those other
pineapples did not survive the voyage. They apparently got wet
and rotted and dissolved into a disgusting, sticky morass, you know,
in the cargo hold. But one prized pristine I kind
(17:58):
of doubt it was entirely christine, but comparatively edible pineapple
made its way into the hands of this king, and
he absolutely loved it. He shot down because an account
of his his tasting by Peter Martyr, who is a
tutor to the Spanish princess, so presumably someone he'd known
(18:21):
since he was a young prince, and he kept in
those confidences or whatever. This is what he had to say,
you know, reporting on the report that Ferdinand gave of
this very first tasting of the pineapple. And I don't know,
mileage may vary, but I found this a little odd.
The most invincible King Ferdinand relates that he has eaten
(18:42):
another fruit brought from those countries. It is like a
pine nut in form and color, covered with scales, and
firmer than a melon. It's flavor excels all other fruits.
Herd degree. Yeah, no, actually, you know, this isn't the
This is not the account that made me squirm. That's
that's gonna come a little later. This one is really fine. Yeah,
but it helps. It helps address something that will will
(19:04):
also examine in this episode. Of course, a pineapple is
neither a pine nor an apple. As I said, it's
the only edible type of bromeliad, which is why it
kind of eats you as you eat it, which is
cool to think about. But yeah, so this also sidebar
for the record, I have to say in my top five,
I would also include cherries. And I think I know
(19:26):
the reason why. You guys remember those uh little fruit
cups you would get grown up, yeah, yeah, yeah, and
they had they had their own kind of hierarchy of fruit, right.
There would be a lot of like melon or cancel
open there and you would get maybe like one or
two pieces of cherries, a couple of pieces of pineapple.
So I think I like them because of their scarcity.
(19:47):
They're scarcy. But we're talking Marischino cherries here, right then,
not like black cherries are like, you know, proper red cherries, right,
But I like the I like those two. I don't
want big cherry to feel like we're playing them to
the left. But you you are right, there's one we
must assume at least semi edible pineapple. The King is
(20:08):
ecstatic about it, and everyone hears about it, because I'm
sure for a few weeks it's like one of the
main things he talked about, you know what I mean.
He's like, all right, we'll send the tomatoes to my
least favorite members of court. So one other thing they
really liked about the pineapple in Europe was its form.
(20:30):
They loved that the fruit was spiky. Keep in mind,
you know, they would have lost their minds over dragon
fruit and light chi and stuff like that. I'm sure.
But Ferdinand has this envoid of Panama. His name is
Gonzalo Fernandez de Ovi do Valdes, and this guy wrote,
I do not suppose that there is in the whole
world any other of so exquisite and lovely appearances. My
(20:55):
pen and my words cannot depict such exceptional qualities, nor
appropriately blazing this fruit so as to particularize the case
fully and satisfactorily, without the brush or the sketch. So
this guy is like so effusive about the pineapple that
(21:16):
it takes him to some sort of meditative joy beyond words.
I feel like maybe that's exaggerating a little. I mean, it's,
you know, the the the condition known as Stendall syndrome
where you're like overcome emotionally and sometimes sexually by beautiful
art in a gallery. This just seems to me like
(21:38):
if there's a name for that that you could apply
to fruit, that is where this dude is going through
right here. I mean literally, I feel like he was
about to, you know, go into some sort of ecstatic
fugue states right, well, you know, we don't. We don't
know because we just have the letter and all. So
maybe he put down the pen and spend some mental
time with the idea of the pineapple because he may
(22:00):
not have been able to well, he would have had
one because he's in Panama. So another thing about pineapple pineapples, Okay,
another thing about pineapple that is really attractive to the
Europeans is that it is so incredibly sweet. We have
to remember that they didn't have access, like the vast
(22:23):
majority of the population didn't have access to cane sugar.
The idea of common sweets wasn't really a thing in
Renaissance Europe for for most people. And if you like,
if you thought, if you're saying, well, they have fruits,
and fruits are sweet, keep in mind those were seasonal, right,
so there were times of the year where you couldn't
have something sweet and the pineapple like it's almost like
(22:46):
I was thinking of a comparison. So there's this really
great moment. There's not a big spoiler in Stephen King's
the Dark Tower novels where for the first time, Roland
the Gunslinger, who is the it was a protagonist of
the series for the first time ever in a book
called The Drawing of the Three, he tastes soda and
(23:09):
he loses his mind because it is so sweet and
he can't do anything but have that, as you said,
kind of stendal syndrome experience. And that's what happened to
a lot of Europeans. It may have literally been the sweetest,
tastiest thing he had ever encountered. Well, sure, and if
you're you know, taste buzzs are trained to eat like
(23:32):
bland food or you know, I mean, even like seasoning
was sort of like hard to come by for some people, right,
So I mean again, I don't want to over generalize here,
but definitely something to the degree of sweetness that a
pineapple achieves, um, and also sugar being really hard to
come by, like you said, it would have been absolutely
(23:52):
mind blowing in in in the literal sense like that
you know, your your mechanics, your your equipment. Let's just say,
you know, I have never experienced anything like this before,
and so you're just like absolutely bowled over. And I
want to go back to one thing and ask your
your opinion about this ben. One of the first description
we read, which was by the Spanish Prince Tutor Guy,
(24:15):
mentioned that it was like a pine nut. And I
actually made some homemade pesto the other day and I
really enjoy the taste of pine nuts. I was snacking
on a few of them before I made the pesto.
It is that it has a very earthy taste. But
I've never really thought of a pineapple having a particularly
nutty taste, but I just wanted to do that was
something that you connected with or if if you think
cold boys off base, well you know there are I
(24:38):
was looking into this too because for us, for many
of us in the modern day, you know, you've had
pine nuts before you've had pineapple. Aside from the phrase
pine there's it doesn't seem like there's a ton to
compare them with. But there are a lot of recipes
that use pineapple and pine nuts together to eight effect,
(25:00):
like saute pineapple with hunting and pine nuts. You can
make I haven't made this yet, but you can make
a pineapple and pine nut torch. I'm seeing that now.
As I googled that, I was seeing if there was
some long lost connection, but I don't think that's the case.
But it does seem as though the flavors are complementary.
There's a pineapple uh and pine nuts pie. There's all
(25:22):
kinds of nice looking stuff. That's a really interesting idea.
I might give that a try. Okay, right on, that's
really cool. There's another thing, though, so we know that
we know that other other types of produce followed a
(25:44):
similar path, you know what I mean In that something
from what we call the America's today made it across
the Atlantic and amazed and fundamentally change the cuisine of
some European countries, right like the potato in Ireland or
the tomato in Italy. The pineapple became this breakout beatles
(26:06):
level star of of this agricultural era. But it didn't
do it alone. If pineapple is the worst comparison don't
make today. If pineapple is like the the John Lennon
of this craze, then there's another thing that's kind of
like the George Harrison. And that's another trend that was
(26:28):
occurring at the same time that made pineapple even more successful.
The widespread dissemination of the written word and the Paris
Review has an excellent piece on this called The Strange
History of the King. Pine Books had been around since,
you know, at least the mid four hundreds in this
(26:49):
area of the world, but in the sixteenth century we
saw an estimated one hundred and thirty million new books
flooding Western Europe, and people in this age of seafaring exploration,
we're also more literate. So you would see of course
scholars and monks and you know, the historical versions of
(27:14):
nerds like us writing about stuff. But you would also
see sailors saying, let me tell you about these shores
I've seen undreamt of beyond the horizon, the civilizations, the
floor of the fauna. Let me amaze you. And this
kind of genre of story became popular. Everybody was reading
this stuff, and when they were reading that, they were
(27:37):
often reading about pineapple too. Uh. We have so many
effusive descriptions. I feel like we can throw them around.
They it's funny because they get a little crazy. I say,
this is a huge fan of pine apple. But for me,
some of these descriptions are still things that make me say, okay,
hold on, gen de Lery, pump your brakes little when
(28:00):
you're saying, maybe's new new bit of fruit in the universe.
It's a little hyperbolic. Not gonna lie. And here John Parkinson,
who was a royal botanist to Charles the first he's
the one who had my kind of most cringe inducing
a description. He wrote this down in a tone called
the theatrum botanic um, which sounds very very official, and
(28:24):
he referred to the pineapple as being scaly like an
art to choke, but so sweet and smell tasting as
if wine, rose water and sugar were mixed together. I
don't I don't know why do you feel me on
that a little cringe? I don't know why. It's something
about the wine, sugar and rose water and just the
(28:46):
words smell being in there, and also art to choke
and scaly. I don't know why there's a combination of
those things put me on edge. I feel you, man.
I mean the one that got me was Charles Lamb
who gets a little not safe for work. But this
is a family show. We can read this part. Here's
how he describes the pineapple pleasure boating on pain from
(29:09):
the fierceness and insanity of a relish like a lovest
kiss she might, which scientifically it is kind of true
because that enzyme is partially digesting your flesh when you
eat it. But he didn't know that. He was just
getting real weird with it. Yeah, man, there's some people
(29:30):
getting real wound up over the pineapple here and and
again Family Show quick content warning. I'm not gonna be
explicit about it, but it is a thing. You hear
that supposedly pineapple makes certain things taste better. Uh. Yeah,
and then while we're while we're pg. Thirteen a little bit,
(29:50):
Uh pineapple, the symbol of the pineapple has come to
mean uh, certain things about relationships for certain parts of
the West, certain uh, non conventional relationships. But uh, but
be as it may. I think we've made our case
that people loved, loved, loved pied apple with like no
(30:14):
criticism whatsoever. So now we get to the turn where
we have to ask ourselves, how did they become just
so closely associated with prestige and luxury? How did they
become the Rolex or the Rolls Royce of produce. Well,
it's true that they weren't the only they were far
(30:34):
from the only new kind of plant life being brought
to Europe. But we we get a pretty interesting take
from Dr Lauren O'Hagan at Cardiff University's School of English
Communication and Philosophy, and Dr O'Hagan points out that the
pineapple came into European culture is sort of a tabula rasa.
(30:59):
You know, it didn't have any of the associations of
other related fruits that had existed for centuries untold in Europe.
So that's that's part of why uh it had that
strange name, because they were like, I don't know, is
it uh, is it an apple or is it like, uh,
(31:20):
let's just call it an apple. The apple thing is
purposeful too. There's a little bit of marketing there, because
if you're a Western European at this time, Noel, what
do you most immediately associate an apple with? Oh? Yeah,
like you know, Lucifer and whatnot and and and the
fall of Man and and all that you know, and
(31:41):
what woman the whole stories macgonal kinds of issues. Um,
but yeah, the forbidden fruit, eating of the forbidden tree,
lured by the fucking tongue of of Satan. Yeah. Yeah.
And the thing is that for anybody remembers the sketch
show The Stay eight, they have a great sketch where
(32:02):
it's a bunch of very loud caricatures of Italian American
people saying, oh, it's not in the Bible. Penguins, penguins
eight in the Bible, you can't go watch the penguins
at the zoo. The pineapple was in a weirdly similar
position because it wasn't mentioned and any other documents these
(32:22):
folks would have been aware of. It wasn't in the Bible,
wasn't in the works of the Greeks and the Romans.
So because it was a completely blank page, the people
who add access to this fruit, the ruling class, could
put their own meaning upon this. And fran Bowman writes
about this beautifully in her book The Pineapple. I don't
(32:44):
know about anybody else, but my book collection is filled
with reference works on very specific things. I love them. Man.
I have a book that's entirely about salt. It's amazing.
Same guy wrote a book about Cod. I gotta get
this pineapple book, The Okay Cod You lost me at Cod. I.
Although I'm sure it's a fascinating history of the Cobb.
(33:04):
It salt again. It's like the spice in Dune, you know,
I mean there's like so much that goes into salt
and resource extraction and like worrying over like this thing
that is ultimately just to make our food taste a
little pop a little bit more, you know. I Mean,
there's other uses for salt, but it's it's weird. It
is kind of one of those things where it's like
it is at the end of the day, probably most
(33:27):
useful as a food additive, not for any health reasons.
It's actually bad for you. It just makes things taste
a little better. It's a flavor enhancer, I guess, God Ben, Yeah,
but no, you're right. The Pineapple book obviously, I mean
we're getting two episodes out of this. We're already almost
forty minutes in on part one, so there is definitely
a quite fraught relationship that we as a species have
(33:51):
with the pineapple. Yeah. Yeah, that's the thing. Marketing comes
in here. No, I'm telling you got to check out
this book, Salt Mark Klanski. I got a copy. I'll
leave I'll leave it in the office for you. Just
one other people to read these weird reference books, all right,
So pineapple, Yeah, you're right, marketing, there's an opportunity here
(34:13):
for the ruling class, because we have to remember the
monarchs at this time, we're absolutist. Their word was pretty
much the same as like the word of God on earth.
So they decided to kind of shape the image of
the pineapple for their own purposes. There was a French
priest named Father di Terte who was probably the first
(34:38):
to bless pineapple as the quote king of fruits. And
by the mid six hundreds this was a really well
known popular image. And we're going to give you a
quote here and then we're gonna explain, uh, something that
might be might be a little confusing, especially to English speakers.
(34:59):
A French physician named Pierre Pome talks about the pineapple
this way. He says, it was thought of just appellation
to call the ananas the king of fruits, because it
is much the finest and best of all that are
upon the face of the earth. It is for this
reason that the King of Kings has placed a crown
upon the head of it already kind of has a crown.
(35:22):
I mean the king of King's talking about God. God
crowned the ananas, which, by the way that you know,
banana is hard enough and us no one's going to
say that out loud. It also sounds a whole lot
like an us um. But yeah, it's that's perfect. It's crowned.
It has a crown, right, obviously it's the best. Yeah,
(35:44):
I think ananas is a fun word to say, but
you're right, no, it's It could be a little dangerous
pronunciation wise. If you are an English speaker is not
acquainted with the story, you might be a little confused.
You might be saying, what the heck is nanas? Do
you mean bananas? Smart guys? Uh? No, Oh, ananas is
(36:06):
actually the much more common phrase or word for this fruit.
If you are speaking Arabic, German, Dutch, French, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Swedish, Turkish, Esperanto,
you're probably going to use the phrase ananas for pineapple.
(36:27):
And that's that's so weird, Like why did we as
English speakers call it pineapple instead of just going with
ananas like pretty much everybody else. Okay, I don't know
how why this didn't occurred to me, and I have
the whole pine nutt thing. It looks like a pine cone,
a pineapple looks like a pine cone. It does. That's
a very good call, Yes, it does. Um, and I
(36:48):
think that might have been why on his expedition to
Guadalupe in Columbus and his crew referred to them as
pina the Indies, which literally translates to pine of the Indians,
because it looked like a well it's it says in
the source that we found um looked like a pine tree.
(37:10):
It looks like a pine cone of a pine tree. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
the plant itself doesn't look like a pine tree, but
the pineapple looks kind of like an enormous pine cone. So,
because Columbus was on a Spanish mission, the Spanish language
still use the shortened form of this, so they just
(37:32):
said peanuts, which is another kind of dangerous pronunciation work.
Uh so, what do you want peanuts? Right entirely up
to you. But the reason so many other languages used
anon us is because they're taking the name given to
(37:53):
the fruit by the indigenous Toopi people of South America.
Anon Us in that language means excellent fruit, which is
also great marketing. Uh. There are, of course, there are
a few other languages that use some derivative of pineapple,
but only when they've imported it from English. So I
believe Japanese is like pinea peru or pineapperu. We're not
(38:19):
Japanese speakers, and the Welsh have something derived from that
as well. But uh yeah, excellent fruit or pineapple. Do
we know when people first started calling a pineapple in English? Well,
then the thing is, the word pineapple is actually already
(38:40):
very commonly used in the English language before people started
referring to the fruit as as that. It was first
used in thirteen uh and it was used to describe
ding ding ding, what we now call pine cones. The
term pine cones itself wasn't actually used in that way
(39:00):
until six Yes, they took something that was already working
and just said okay. They essentially said, okay, that's a
pine cone too. You can just eat this one a
little bit more easily. Yeah. Yeah. And it's funny because
in some conversations with our pal Gabe, we're trying to
(39:24):
figure out why the English language just stuck with pineapple
as as you said, No, the word was already extant,
you know, in the English language. But the ultimate reason
might be a little bit of a superiority complex. English
speakers might just think their own language was better than
(39:45):
other languages, which is not really based on facts. So
much as it is opinion. But that's why ananus is
so it can be so confusing. An honest and pineapple
are very much the same thing. And if we go
back to the symbolic representation, aside from the question of
(40:05):
what's in a name, I love, I love, love love
the idea that someone thought God itself had purposely made
a crown on this pineapple to let everybody know it's
the king of fruits. And this was actually as innocuous
and funny as it seems. This did something that was
(40:28):
a little bit of clever, dangerous propaganda, because the idea
that anything with a crown had been appointed by Heaven,
whether it's a fruit or a person, became an argument
for the divine right of kings. Also, you know, probably
(40:50):
easier to like get behind a pineapple than some sort
of despot. You know. It's like, I love the way
this pineapple taste. This is making my life better, the
fact that it's so sweet and delicious and and fragrant um,
and it's also crowned. Okay, I guess if the pineapples, okay,
I'll apply that same respect to this king. If I must.
If the pineapples on board, then who are we to oppose.
(41:13):
This is where we get to, you know, the obvious
dext step because monarchists, though they may have been the
ruling parties of several European countries, we're very much, uh,
in a weird way, they were very much on board
with Carl Marx's idea of owning the means of production.
(41:34):
They said, why are we shipping all these things here?
Let's try to grow them. They did not meet with success.
As you know, pineapples need a tropical climate to thrive,
so Europeans, despite their efforts, Uh, they were unable to
grow pineapples at home. That's right. And um, a lot
of this stuff we're going, I think, I think we're
in a really good place to transition to part two.
(41:57):
A lot of the stuff of the kind of low
long game of the pineapple in Europe and it's it's
proliferation to the rest of the of the world, um,
is covered in that episode and addition to some really
interesting politics around the pineapple and some weird historical flexes
around the pineapple as well. But yeah, you're exactly right, then,
(42:18):
very very difficult to cultivate. That's why it was so
rare and uh, and precious because you had to get
them from the source, and you know it was not easy.
They didn't have like ship giant shipping containers in refrigeration,
and it was a very arduous voyage. And like we said,
from the first one, only one survived. So I'm sure
the demand far outweighed the supply. Yes, that's correct. Uh everybody,
(42:43):
go enjoy a pineapple and be sure to tune in
for part two, where we will examine what happened when
Europeans finally kind of got the hang of cultivating pineapples.
It's it doesn't go the way you might ex fact.
Uh No, we have talked about this off air, and
we both decided what better way to end today's episode
(43:07):
by sharing with you one of our favorite, one of
our favorite first impressions of a pineapple. This comes from
a new voyage and description of the Isthmus of America
by Lionel Wafer in six Lionel Wafer, by the way,
it sounds like a toast of London name. If you
don't know what I mean by that, police instantly, I
(43:30):
know you do, Ben, But any of anyone in listening
have you seven seen Toast of London? It's great Lionel
wafer is perfectly a toast of London name. I'm gonna
leave it at that. But to me this borders on
pineapple poetry. Ben, and I would ask ridiculous historians send
us your pineapple poems. Uh post them on the on
the Facebook group Ridiculous Historians. But Ben, would you like
(43:51):
to lead us off in this pineapple poetry reading? Yeah,
let's let's divide and conquer the same way you would
cut up a pineapple. All these with the booze. That
delicious fruit, which we call the pineapple. In shape not
much ununlike an artitube as big as a man's head.
It grows like a crown on the top of a stoll,
(44:13):
about as big as one's arm and a foot and
a half high. The fruit is ordinarily about six pound wheat,
and is enclosed with short, prickly leaves, like an artitude.
They do not strip, but pair off these leaves to
get at the fruit, which hath no stone or kernel
(44:33):
in It tis very juicing, and some fancy it resemble
the taste of all the most delicious fruits one can
imagine mixed together. It ripens at all times of year,
and is raised from new plants. I like the idea
of I like the idea of pineapple poetry, and I agree.
(44:57):
Would love to hear yours also if you want to,
if you want to get into the musical artistic side
of it, please check out Pineapple Princess by Annette Funicello. Uh,
it's It's jam and Pineapple Jam is great too. Oh man,
I am feeding for pineapple now, so I say, Paul
(45:18):
it Aday with huge, huge thanks to our super producer
Casey Pegram, our guest producer Andrew Howard, who we've got
to have on the show sometime, maybe an episode on Maine.
Yes Maine, that that is where he hails from, and
I think we definitely should do that. Huge thanks to
Alex Williams who composed this theme. Christopher hasciotis here in spirit,
soon to be here in the flesh or in the
(45:38):
you know, the zoom um and Jonathan Stripped and the quister.
I got nothing abad to say about him today. I'm
interested to hear his opinion on pineapple. Uh. Thanks so much, everybody.
We'll see you next time. Foix M. For more podcasts
(46:08):
from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app
Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. That's our super producer, Casey Pegram.
That's our guest producer Andrew Howard. Uh they called me
Ben because that's my name. Today's episode is about bar none,
my favorite fruit. It's your favorite fruit, absolutely Okay, so
(00:49):
we're gonna have to get into you know, your your
top five. I have to ask pineapple is the fruit
in question today? Long been considered a sign of of affluence,
you know, throughout history. I'm a big fan of pineapple.
Tub but how do you like it? It It seems like
an awful lot to harvest a pineapple and it's you know,
(01:09):
raw form. Yeah, so there there are a number of
ways you can prepare. Oh your knowl that's me so there.
There are a number of ways that I personally like pineapple.
I'll put it in smoothies. I'm a person who buys
the whole pineapple and then does the cutting boring thing.
You know. Um, I've made pineapple upside down cake before.
(01:31):
I'm not a big cake guy, but my mom loves it.
What about you? Where does pineapple sit in your hierarchy
of fruitst Well, first, really really have to ask you
do you have a designated pineapple machette? But you have
to use for because it's I mean it's like a
it's like hacking into a coconut. Man, it's just got
the spines, and I mean it's scary looking to me.
How do you go about this? Yeah, I use a
(01:55):
I use a typical kitchen knife and you slice off
the sides and then you can do a little old
twist top thing with that stalk, which is always fun.
So maybe I'm making a little bit more out of
it than it really is. Probably not as dangerous of fruit,
perhaps as I have have have envisioned or perhaps had
nightmares about. I'm not scared of pineapple, Ben, I don't
want anyone to think that going in. I love pineapple.
(02:16):
I guess I'm just more of a dull pineapple rings
in the can kind of guy. But you're right, fresh
pineapple is absolutely delicious. Love a pineapple upside down cake,
very good in a smoothie. Love it as a frozen
yogurt topping. You know, a little kind of chunked up pineapples,
you drop a little bit on that with some of
that syrup and it's absolutely chef's kiss um. Pineapple for
(02:37):
me is probably I like strawberries the best, and then
I would say pineapple is probably three second. I like,
you know, mixed berries, like a like a blueberry raspberry
what blueberry type situation you know, as far as smoothies,
But clearly pineapple is much beloved by not only yourself, Ben,
but uh, historical royals throughout you know, time immemorial. Yeah,
(03:02):
it's crazy when you think about it, because if you
live in many places in the world, you can stroll
to your local grocery store and get a pineapple for
a pretty low price. But back in the day, the
best way to say it is, having a pineapple was
much more like having a Rolex Rolls Royce than it
was like having having ingredients for a smoothie or a
(03:25):
yogurt topping. And that's something that baffled us. Pineapples were
a symbol, and there's still a symbol today in certain
cultures for certain things. But for about two and a
half centuries, about two hundred and fifty years, pineapples became
a symbol of luxury, of opulence. If you really wanted
to flex on someone. Never mind your military insignia or
(03:50):
your signa ring just dropped by, you know, go by
the the next ballroom gathering with a pineapple on your arm. Yeah,
you know, maybe like hat some sort of chained to
it so you can wear it around like a handbag. Um,
it's definitely an accessory in that respect, right, it's like, hey,
look at me, I have a pineapple, so the way
people maybe flex their tesla's or something these days. But
(04:12):
the history of the pineapple is really fascinating. One Christopher
Columbus brought you know, in the same way he quote
unquote discovered America. Right, Okay, let's not hot take Christopher
Columbus here, we're not here for that. But you know,
he wasn't really looking for America. He just kind of
stumbled upon it, which I guess counts is discovery. But
he also sort of stumbled upon the pineapple um in
(04:32):
that it was something that was available exclusively in South America,
wasn't something you'd find in Europe. Um. So he, during
his you know, numerous voyages to the New World, brought
them back to Spain and it became very very popular because, uh,
(04:54):
there's some descriptions of the flavor we're gonna get into
that I find not only a little uh kind of
cringe e, but just it's just kind of shows where
people's heads were as far as these things and the
flavor profiles in general at the time. But also you know,
they were beautiful kind of right. They're very arresting looking fruits.
Like I said, for me, I maybe interpreted that as
sort of like like danger. But yeah, it definitely is
(05:18):
like something that you know, has a design equality to
It's got a certain symmetry and I kind of like
this you know, scaly uh skin, and then the like
the way the top kind of bunches up into these
you know, weird little sprigs. And people were taken with
it visually, and it became the subject of a lot
of paintings and still live people were incorporating into design
(05:38):
features and carving wooden furniture, and like you said, Ben,
it even became like an insignia for some houses, you know,
or families of of great opulence and also a sign
of hospitality that you might see even today in some
older you know, manner esque hotels. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it.
(05:59):
I do want to start from the offset, saying that
this will end up being more than one episode at
least our exploration of the pineapple. We consider this fruit
unique because it is it's the only edible bromeliad, right, Like,
I don't think you should give yourself a tough time
(06:20):
about feeling like maybe the pineapple is a little bit
intimidating because the pineapple is the only food known to
contain something called bromelion. You know how they say like
citric acid can have an effect on you on your
mouth if you eat too much. Pineapple does have citric acid,
(06:42):
but it also has this enzyme that literally digest protein.
So it can hurt to eat this because that enzyme
when you're eating pineapple is digesting the inside skin of
your mouth. That wow, I've never thought about that. Is
this something that maybe certain people might be more affittible
two or more sensitive to I've never noticed that. Well,
(07:04):
you know, I wonder too if this is something maybe
there's a pineapple allergy. But I'm wondering also if maybe
it's a it's a thing where you have to be
moderate in your enjoyment. Maybe there's a cumulative effect totally.
It's sort of like when you when you say that
sweet and low gives you cancer, It's like, well, maybe
it gave some rats cancer when they fed it to
(07:24):
them NonStop for like weeks on end, right exactly. Not
to say that you shouldn't be wary of your sweetener choices.
I'm just saying it's a you know, it's it's all
about moderation and context. Yes, for the humans of the audience,
for fretty rast in the audience, completely different situations, but
everybody so. So the thing is, we we talked about
(07:49):
how pineapples are relatively inexpensive. Now, so the average cost
for a pound of pineapple in the US is usually
gonna be around two dollars and seventy five cents, which
is not bad. But in the time period we're talking
about today, ridiculous historians, a single pineapple costs the equivalent
(08:13):
of eight thousand dollars. And I've never I don't know
about you, man, but have you ever seen those They're
these fruits in Japan, various types that are enormously expensive,
including like melons that are purposely grown in sort of
a rounded square shape, and and they look good. I mean,
I don't I don't object to melons, but I certainly
(08:36):
don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on fruit, So
to me it's mind boggling that someone would spend eight
thousand dollars. But as you'll see, they were not really
buying the fruit itself. They were buying the idea that
are represented the idea of being expensive and elite. I
(08:56):
would argue that pineapple might be like the n f
T of of this era. You know, maybe they're they're
buying the concept of like ownership that they can like
flaunt and say this is mine and the only I
can eat it, and you can't have any. Yeah, yeah,
maybe that's not a bad comparison. This is the thing.
(09:17):
If you travel to an older hotel or even a
newer one, you next time you do, because I know
we all want to start traveling again. Next time you
travel and you find yourself at a hotel, look around
the lobby, look around your room, and you might just
find a picture of a pineapple somewhere nearby. Why is that? Knuel? Yeah,
(09:39):
I mentioned at the top of show the idea of
especially in like kind of more classic, you know, manner
style hotels, you might see this being more prevalent because
it would be literally a holdover from you know, when
it was originally a very popular insignia of hospitality, before
it even became a symbol of this great wealth or whatever.
But you're right, man, I mean it's almost like one
(10:00):
of those things where even newer hotels will will kind
of sneak it in almost as a nod to the
history of you know, the hospitality industry. Right, Yeah. Yeah,
it's a complicated symbol. The more we unpack it, we
know that the pineapple, as you said, Noel, has function
originally in the West as a kind of symbol of
(10:23):
hospitality instead of royalty. But it also has a lot
of it's got a lot of dark stuff wrapped up
in that symbolism to centuries of pillaging and colonization. It's
also a newcomer, relatively speaking to the European sphere. Up
(10:43):
until what the fifteenth century or so, pineapples were unknown.
People of course, in South America enjoyed the pineapple. It
was very familiar fruit. If you went to Brazil at
this time, you would have seen it and people would
have known about it for hundreds and hundreds of years.
But it wasn't until crystal ball Cologne. This is one
(11:06):
of those facts you learn about him in school that
was actually true. It wasn't until Cristal ball Cologne. Christopher
Columbus came face to face with this fruit in fourteen
ninety three when he and his crew discovered a Caribbean
village that consumed pineapple. So unlike North America, this is
something that he actually did discover for Europeans. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
(11:30):
and I get we give we give Christopher Columbus a
bit of a hard time, you know, probably because of
the light genocide stuff, But we discussed all this. I
think this is a pretty well established There's also a
great episode of The Sopranos. I'm sorry I keep harping
on The Sopranos on all of our shows lately because
I just recently wrapped my bi annual rewatch. But there's
one particular episode called Christopher that was actually written by
(11:52):
Michael Imperiola, who plays the character Christopher on the show.
But it's about the Christopher Columbus Parade in New Jersey
and and the kind of a turf war that developed
between the Italian American population in Jersey and the Native
American population who obviously think Christopher Columbus as a monster. Uh.
And they literally have like a clash in the streets
(12:14):
and like the Native American contingent are burning effigies of
him and stuff, and it ends up like a slush.
He gets thrown at somebody and and and you know,
just all hell breaks loose. Yeah, and that's that's based
on a real thing. There was a segment of the
Italian American population who felt that Christopher Columbus was a
(12:36):
very important part of their cultural history was being unfairly malied.
That's exactly right, and that's what the episode goes into.
So it's a lot about identity politics and things. It's
it's a little ham fist. It doesn't hold up quite
uh as as well as one might hope, but it's
definitely an interesting time capsule. And I forget the guy's name,
but we've talked about this in other episodes of Ridiculous History.
And forgive the sidebar, but the gentleman who plays the
(12:59):
single tier crying Native American figure in the famous recycling
you know campaign, which was essentially started by the big
corporations to convince you know, regular consumers that pollution was
their fault. Uh, that guy's not even Native American he's
actually Italian. Um. And that comes up in the episode
(13:19):
where they're trying to like blackmail the Native American group
by saying, we're gonna we're gonna blow the lid off this.
We're gonna tell everybody that your guy isn't actually Native
American at all, he's Italian like us. But it turns
out that everyone pretty much already knows that. But you're right,
then let's just give him credit where credit is that
he did, you know, essentially stumble across the pineapple. But
(13:40):
isn't it a situation where it was like they were
offered either like a dish containing human flesh or a pineapple,
and they chose the pineapple. Is that a myth? It
seems a myth, like, well, it's it's um, let's say
it's an historical legend, because there's not documentation proving that.
(14:00):
But yeah, the story goes that the crew was offered
two choices. They could have pineapple or they could have
a stew, and the stew contained human body parts. So
they went for the pineapple, probably with a little bit
of a little bit of hesitation. But then as they
had a bite of this delicious fruit, they said, this
(14:21):
is amazing, and they stocked up on pineapples and brought
them back, as you said, to Spain, where it's spread
throughout the aristocratic classes. And this is where the idea
of pineapples becoming synonymous with or symbolic of hospitality comes from.
It comes from those trips to the Caribbean. According to
(14:42):
the World Encyclopedia of Food, travelers would go to these
islands and they would discover that if someone in the
native community had a pineapple hanging by the door, they
that meant that they would welcome strangers. This was a
house it was okay to visit. And uh, you know,
(15:03):
they talked about this, played the game and telephone and
these trips back in New York. So by the time
they finally get off the ship on the return trip
to Europe, they have cemented in their minds the idea
that a pineapple is sort of a high class symbol
of hospitality. And royalty loved this, by the way. Yeah,
and then even it goes even further. During colonial times,
(15:25):
sea captains would mark their return home by spearing a
pineapple on a fence post. Uh, and it kind of
gave a sign to the friends and family of the
captain that he was home safe and were prepared to
receive visitors right, right. And this explains something that I
(15:46):
had always had a question about. Remember, in many places
where I've traveled, I would be walking up to a
building and there would be these pillars or columns that had,
to my mind, in explicably had pineapples carved somewhere on
the pillar or somewhere at the top of the column.
And this is like a well known addition to entrances,
(16:12):
at least in the world of architecture. So it literally
made a mark in stone upon numerous cultures throughout the world.
Let's talk about pineapple mania. I think it's I don't
think it's hyperbole to call it that. So Christopher Columbus,
he comes back from his second voyage to the America's
(16:33):
in and he's brought along a bunch of cool stuff.
He's got pumpkins, he's got tobacco, he's got tomatoes, he's
got a couple of really chill parrots. But most importantly,
he has pineapples. And I don't think he had any
idea how popular these would become, right, he just had
(16:54):
them kind of tossed in there with all the other stuff.
Parents are never chilled open by the way. Parrots are
always aggressive, and they stare deeply into your soul and
they see you, they see the darkness inside of you,
and they want to to come at you. I feel
like I feel like it depends on the parrot. I've
known some just like people. I've known some wonderful parrots
(17:15):
and some just monsters staring into the abyss, my friend
the abyss stairs back. Sorry I have I'm triggered by parrots. Um.
But yeah, the pineapples were a huge deal. So the
King of Spain, Ferdinand the Second, ended up being kind
of the standard bear for this first wave of pineapple craze. Right,
we talked about the hospitality stuff that was to come
(17:37):
a little bit later. Um, this is the very first
time anyone is seen a pineapple. And we're not joking
when we say a pineapple, because all of those other
pineapples did not survive the voyage. They apparently got wet
and rotted and dissolved into a disgusting, sticky morass, you know,
in the cargo hold. But one prized pristine I kind
(17:58):
of doubt it was entirely christine, but comparatively edible pineapple
made its way into the hands of this king, and
he absolutely loved it. He shot down because an account
of his his tasting by Peter Martyr, who is a
tutor to the Spanish princess, so presumably someone he'd known
(18:21):
since he was a young prince, and he kept in
those confidences or whatever. This is what he had to say,
you know, reporting on the report that Ferdinand gave of
this very first tasting of the pineapple. And I don't know,
mileage may vary, but I found this a little odd.
The most invincible King Ferdinand relates that he has eaten
(18:42):
another fruit brought from those countries. It is like a
pine nut in form and color, covered with scales, and
firmer than a melon. It's flavor excels all other fruits.
Herd degree. Yeah, no, actually, you know, this isn't the
This is not the account that made me squirm. That's
that's gonna come a little later. This one is really fine. Yeah,
but it helps. It helps address something that will will
(19:04):
also examine in this episode. Of course, a pineapple is
neither a pine nor an apple. As I said, it's
the only edible type of bromeliad, which is why it
kind of eats you as you eat it, which is
cool to think about. But yeah, so this also sidebar
for the record, I have to say in my top five,
I would also include cherries. And I think I know
(19:26):
the reason why. You guys remember those uh little fruit
cups you would get grown up, yeah, yeah, yeah, and
they had they had their own kind of hierarchy of fruit, right.
There would be a lot of like melon or cancel
open there and you would get maybe like one or
two pieces of cherries, a couple of pieces of pineapple.
So I think I like them because of their scarcity.
(19:47):
They're scarcy. But we're talking Marischino cherries here, right then,
not like black cherries are like, you know, proper red cherries, right,
But I like the I like those two. I don't
want big cherry to feel like we're playing them to
the left. But you you are right, there's one we
must assume at least semi edible pineapple. The King is
(20:08):
ecstatic about it, and everyone hears about it, because I'm
sure for a few weeks it's like one of the
main things he talked about, you know what I mean.
He's like, all right, we'll send the tomatoes to my
least favorite members of court. So one other thing they
really liked about the pineapple in Europe was its form.
(20:30):
They loved that the fruit was spiky. Keep in mind,
you know, they would have lost their minds over dragon
fruit and light chi and stuff like that. I'm sure.
But Ferdinand has this envoid of Panama. His name is
Gonzalo Fernandez de Ovi do Valdes, and this guy wrote,
I do not suppose that there is in the whole
world any other of so exquisite and lovely appearances. My
(20:55):
pen and my words cannot depict such exceptional qualities, nor
appropriately blazing this fruit so as to particularize the case
fully and satisfactorily, without the brush or the sketch. So
this guy is like so effusive about the pineapple that
(21:16):
it takes him to some sort of meditative joy beyond words.
I feel like maybe that's exaggerating a little. I mean, it's,
you know, the the the condition known as Stendall syndrome
where you're like overcome emotionally and sometimes sexually by beautiful
art in a gallery. This just seems to me like
(21:38):
if there's a name for that that you could apply
to fruit, that is where this dude is going through
right here. I mean literally, I feel like he was
about to, you know, go into some sort of ecstatic
fugue states right, well, you know, we don't. We don't
know because we just have the letter and all. So
maybe he put down the pen and spend some mental
time with the idea of the pineapple because he may
(22:00):
not have been able to well, he would have had
one because he's in Panama. So another thing about pineapple pineapples, Okay,
another thing about pineapple that is really attractive to the
Europeans is that it is so incredibly sweet. We have
to remember that they didn't have access, like the vast
(22:23):
majority of the population didn't have access to cane sugar.
The idea of common sweets wasn't really a thing in
Renaissance Europe for for most people. And if you like,
if you thought, if you're saying, well, they have fruits,
and fruits are sweet, keep in mind those were seasonal, right,
so there were times of the year where you couldn't
have something sweet and the pineapple like it's almost like
(22:46):
I was thinking of a comparison. So there's this really
great moment. There's not a big spoiler in Stephen King's
the Dark Tower novels where for the first time, Roland
the Gunslinger, who is the it was a protagonist of
the series for the first time ever in a book
called The Drawing of the Three, he tastes soda and
(23:09):
he loses his mind because it is so sweet and
he can't do anything but have that, as you said,
kind of stendal syndrome experience. And that's what happened to
a lot of Europeans. It may have literally been the sweetest,
tastiest thing he had ever encountered. Well, sure, and if
you're you know, taste buzzs are trained to eat like
(23:32):
bland food or you know, I mean, even like seasoning
was sort of like hard to come by for some people, right,
So I mean again, I don't want to over generalize here,
but definitely something to the degree of sweetness that a
pineapple achieves, um, and also sugar being really hard to
come by, like you said, it would have been absolutely
(23:52):
mind blowing in in in the literal sense like that
you know, your your mechanics, your your equipment. Let's just say,
you know, I have never experienced anything like this before,
and so you're just like absolutely bowled over. And I
want to go back to one thing and ask your
your opinion about this ben. One of the first description
we read, which was by the Spanish Prince Tutor Guy,
(24:15):
mentioned that it was like a pine nut. And I
actually made some homemade pesto the other day and I
really enjoy the taste of pine nuts. I was snacking
on a few of them before I made the pesto.
It is that it has a very earthy taste. But
I've never really thought of a pineapple having a particularly
nutty taste, but I just wanted to do that was
something that you connected with or if if you think
cold boys off base, well you know there are I
(24:38):
was looking into this too because for us, for many
of us in the modern day, you know, you've had
pine nuts before you've had pineapple. Aside from the phrase
pine there's it doesn't seem like there's a ton to
compare them with. But there are a lot of recipes
that use pineapple and pine nuts together to eight effect,
(25:00):
like saute pineapple with hunting and pine nuts. You can
make I haven't made this yet, but you can make
a pineapple and pine nut torch. I'm seeing that now.
As I googled that, I was seeing if there was
some long lost connection, but I don't think that's the case.
But it does seem as though the flavors are complementary.
There's a pineapple uh and pine nuts pie. There's all
(25:22):
kinds of nice looking stuff. That's a really interesting idea.
I might give that a try. Okay, right on, that's
really cool. There's another thing, though, so we know that
we know that other other types of produce followed a
(25:44):
similar path, you know what I mean In that something
from what we call the America's today made it across
the Atlantic and amazed and fundamentally change the cuisine of
some European countries, right like the potato in Ireland or
the tomato in Italy. The pineapple became this breakout beatles
(26:06):
level star of of this agricultural era. But it didn't
do it alone. If pineapple is the worst comparison don't
make today. If pineapple is like the the John Lennon
of this craze, then there's another thing that's kind of
like the George Harrison. And that's another trend that was
(26:28):
occurring at the same time that made pineapple even more successful.
The widespread dissemination of the written word and the Paris
Review has an excellent piece on this called The Strange
History of the King. Pine Books had been around since,
you know, at least the mid four hundreds in this
(26:49):
area of the world, but in the sixteenth century we
saw an estimated one hundred and thirty million new books
flooding Western Europe, and people in this age of seafaring exploration,
we're also more literate. So you would see of course
scholars and monks and you know, the historical versions of
(27:14):
nerds like us writing about stuff. But you would also
see sailors saying, let me tell you about these shores
I've seen undreamt of beyond the horizon, the civilizations, the
floor of the fauna. Let me amaze you. And this
kind of genre of story became popular. Everybody was reading
this stuff, and when they were reading that, they were
(27:37):
often reading about pineapple too. Uh. We have so many
effusive descriptions. I feel like we can throw them around.
They it's funny because they get a little crazy. I say,
this is a huge fan of pine apple. But for me,
some of these descriptions are still things that make me say, okay,
hold on, gen de Lery, pump your brakes little when
(28:00):
you're saying, maybe's new new bit of fruit in the universe.
It's a little hyperbolic. Not gonna lie. And here John Parkinson,
who was a royal botanist to Charles the first he's
the one who had my kind of most cringe inducing
a description. He wrote this down in a tone called
the theatrum botanic um, which sounds very very official, and
(28:24):
he referred to the pineapple as being scaly like an
art to choke, but so sweet and smell tasting as
if wine, rose water and sugar were mixed together. I
don't I don't know why do you feel me on
that a little cringe? I don't know why. It's something
about the wine, sugar and rose water and just the
(28:46):
words smell being in there, and also art to choke
and scaly. I don't know why there's a combination of
those things put me on edge. I feel you, man.
I mean the one that got me was Charles Lamb
who gets a little not safe for work. But this
is a family show. We can read this part. Here's
how he describes the pineapple pleasure boating on pain from
(29:09):
the fierceness and insanity of a relish like a lovest
kiss she might, which scientifically it is kind of true
because that enzyme is partially digesting your flesh when you
eat it. But he didn't know that. He was just
getting real weird with it. Yeah, man, there's some people
(29:30):
getting real wound up over the pineapple here and and
again Family Show quick content warning. I'm not gonna be
explicit about it, but it is a thing. You hear
that supposedly pineapple makes certain things taste better. Uh. Yeah,
and then while we're while we're pg. Thirteen a little bit,
(29:50):
Uh pineapple, the symbol of the pineapple has come to
mean uh, certain things about relationships for certain parts of
the West, certain uh, non conventional relationships. But uh, but
be as it may. I think we've made our case
that people loved, loved, loved pied apple with like no
(30:14):
criticism whatsoever. So now we get to the turn where
we have to ask ourselves, how did they become just
so closely associated with prestige and luxury? How did they
become the Rolex or the Rolls Royce of produce. Well,
it's true that they weren't the only they were far
(30:34):
from the only new kind of plant life being brought
to Europe. But we we get a pretty interesting take
from Dr Lauren O'Hagan at Cardiff University's School of English
Communication and Philosophy, and Dr O'Hagan points out that the
pineapple came into European culture is sort of a tabula rasa.
(30:59):
You know, it didn't have any of the associations of
other related fruits that had existed for centuries untold in Europe.
So that's that's part of why uh it had that
strange name, because they were like, I don't know, is
it uh, is it an apple or is it like, uh,
(31:20):
let's just call it an apple. The apple thing is
purposeful too. There's a little bit of marketing there, because
if you're a Western European at this time, Noel, what
do you most immediately associate an apple with? Oh? Yeah,
like you know, Lucifer and whatnot and and and the
fall of Man and and all that you know, and
(31:41):
what woman the whole stories macgonal kinds of issues. Um,
but yeah, the forbidden fruit, eating of the forbidden tree,
lured by the fucking tongue of of Satan. Yeah. Yeah.
And the thing is that for anybody remembers the sketch
show The Stay eight, they have a great sketch where
(32:02):
it's a bunch of very loud caricatures of Italian American
people saying, oh, it's not in the Bible. Penguins, penguins
eight in the Bible, you can't go watch the penguins
at the zoo. The pineapple was in a weirdly similar
position because it wasn't mentioned and any other documents these
(32:22):
folks would have been aware of. It wasn't in the Bible,
wasn't in the works of the Greeks and the Romans.
So because it was a completely blank page, the people
who add access to this fruit, the ruling class, could
put their own meaning upon this. And fran Bowman writes
about this beautifully in her book The Pineapple. I don't
(32:44):
know about anybody else, but my book collection is filled
with reference works on very specific things. I love them. Man.
I have a book that's entirely about salt. It's amazing.
Same guy wrote a book about Cod. I gotta get
this pineapple book, The Okay Cod You lost me at Cod. I.
Although I'm sure it's a fascinating history of the Cobb.
(33:04):
It salt again. It's like the spice in Dune, you know,
I mean there's like so much that goes into salt
and resource extraction and like worrying over like this thing
that is ultimately just to make our food taste a
little pop a little bit more, you know. I Mean,
there's other uses for salt, but it's it's weird. It
is kind of one of those things where it's like
it is at the end of the day, probably most
(33:27):
useful as a food additive, not for any health reasons.
It's actually bad for you. It just makes things taste
a little better. It's a flavor enhancer, I guess, God Ben, Yeah,
but no, you're right. The Pineapple book obviously, I mean
we're getting two episodes out of this. We're already almost
forty minutes in on part one, so there is definitely
a quite fraught relationship that we as a species have
(33:51):
with the pineapple. Yeah. Yeah, that's the thing. Marketing comes
in here. No, I'm telling you got to check out
this book, Salt Mark Klanski. I got a copy. I'll
leave I'll leave it in the office for you. Just
one other people to read these weird reference books, all right,
So pineapple, Yeah, you're right, marketing, there's an opportunity here
(34:13):
for the ruling class, because we have to remember the
monarchs at this time, we're absolutist. Their word was pretty
much the same as like the word of God on earth.
So they decided to kind of shape the image of
the pineapple for their own purposes. There was a French
priest named Father di Terte who was probably the first
(34:38):
to bless pineapple as the quote king of fruits. And
by the mid six hundreds this was a really well
known popular image. And we're going to give you a
quote here and then we're gonna explain, uh, something that
might be might be a little confusing, especially to English speakers.
(34:59):
A French physician named Pierre Pome talks about the pineapple
this way. He says, it was thought of just appellation
to call the ananas the king of fruits, because it
is much the finest and best of all that are
upon the face of the earth. It is for this
reason that the King of Kings has placed a crown
upon the head of it already kind of has a crown.
(35:22):
I mean the king of King's talking about God. God
crowned the ananas, which, by the way that you know,
banana is hard enough and us no one's going to
say that out loud. It also sounds a whole lot
like an us um. But yeah, it's that's perfect. It's crowned.
It has a crown, right, obviously it's the best. Yeah,
(35:44):
I think ananas is a fun word to say, but
you're right, no, it's It could be a little dangerous
pronunciation wise. If you are an English speaker is not
acquainted with the story, you might be a little confused.
You might be saying, what the heck is nanas? Do
you mean bananas? Smart guys? Uh? No, Oh, ananas is
(36:06):
actually the much more common phrase or word for this fruit.
If you are speaking Arabic, German, Dutch, French, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Swedish, Turkish, Esperanto,
you're probably going to use the phrase ananas for pineapple.
(36:27):
And that's that's so weird, Like why did we as
English speakers call it pineapple instead of just going with
ananas like pretty much everybody else. Okay, I don't know
how why this didn't occurred to me, and I have
the whole pine nutt thing. It looks like a pine cone,
a pineapple looks like a pine cone. It does. That's
a very good call, Yes, it does. Um, and I
(36:48):
think that might have been why on his expedition to
Guadalupe in Columbus and his crew referred to them as
pina the Indies, which literally translates to pine of the Indians,
because it looked like a well it's it says in
the source that we found um looked like a pine tree.
(37:10):
It looks like a pine cone of a pine tree. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
the plant itself doesn't look like a pine tree, but
the pineapple looks kind of like an enormous pine cone. So,
because Columbus was on a Spanish mission, the Spanish language
still use the shortened form of this, so they just
(37:32):
said peanuts, which is another kind of dangerous pronunciation work.
Uh so, what do you want peanuts? Right entirely up
to you. But the reason so many other languages used
anon us is because they're taking the name given to
(37:53):
the fruit by the indigenous Toopi people of South America.
Anon Us in that language means excellent fruit, which is
also great marketing. Uh. There are, of course, there are
a few other languages that use some derivative of pineapple,
but only when they've imported it from English. So I
believe Japanese is like pinea peru or pineapperu. We're not
(38:19):
Japanese speakers, and the Welsh have something derived from that
as well. But uh yeah, excellent fruit or pineapple. Do
we know when people first started calling a pineapple in English? Well,
then the thing is, the word pineapple is actually already
(38:40):
very commonly used in the English language before people started
referring to the fruit as as that. It was first
used in thirteen uh and it was used to describe
ding ding ding, what we now call pine cones. The
term pine cones itself wasn't actually used in that way
(39:00):
until six Yes, they took something that was already working
and just said okay. They essentially said, okay, that's a
pine cone too. You can just eat this one a
little bit more easily. Yeah. Yeah. And it's funny because
in some conversations with our pal Gabe, we're trying to
(39:24):
figure out why the English language just stuck with pineapple
as as you said, No, the word was already extant,
you know, in the English language. But the ultimate reason
might be a little bit of a superiority complex. English
speakers might just think their own language was better than
(39:45):
other languages, which is not really based on facts. So
much as it is opinion. But that's why ananus is
so it can be so confusing. An honest and pineapple
are very much the same thing. And if we go
back to the symbolic representation, aside from the question of
(40:05):
what's in a name, I love, I love, love love
the idea that someone thought God itself had purposely made
a crown on this pineapple to let everybody know it's
the king of fruits. And this was actually as innocuous
and funny as it seems. This did something that was
(40:28):
a little bit of clever, dangerous propaganda, because the idea
that anything with a crown had been appointed by Heaven,
whether it's a fruit or a person, became an argument
for the divine right of kings. Also, you know, probably
(40:50):
easier to like get behind a pineapple than some sort
of despot. You know. It's like, I love the way
this pineapple taste. This is making my life better, the
fact that it's so sweet and delicious and and fragrant um,
and it's also crowned. Okay, I guess if the pineapples, okay,
I'll apply that same respect to this king. If I must.
If the pineapples on board, then who are we to oppose.
(41:13):
This is where we get to, you know, the obvious
dext step because monarchists, though they may have been the
ruling parties of several European countries, we're very much, uh,
in a weird way, they were very much on board
with Carl Marx's idea of owning the means of production.
(41:34):
They said, why are we shipping all these things here?
Let's try to grow them. They did not meet with success.
As you know, pineapples need a tropical climate to thrive,
so Europeans, despite their efforts, Uh, they were unable to
grow pineapples at home. That's right. And um, a lot
of this stuff we're going, I think, I think we're
in a really good place to transition to part two.
(41:57):
A lot of the stuff of the kind of low
long game of the pineapple in Europe and it's it's
proliferation to the rest of the of the world, um,
is covered in that episode and addition to some really
interesting politics around the pineapple and some weird historical flexes
around the pineapple as well. But yeah, you're exactly right, then,
(42:18):
very very difficult to cultivate. That's why it was so
rare and uh, and precious because you had to get
them from the source, and you know it was not easy.
They didn't have like ship giant shipping containers in refrigeration,
and it was a very arduous voyage. And like we said,
from the first one, only one survived. So I'm sure
the demand far outweighed the supply. Yes, that's correct. Uh everybody,
(42:43):
go enjoy a pineapple and be sure to tune in
for part two, where we will examine what happened when
Europeans finally kind of got the hang of cultivating pineapples.
It's it doesn't go the way you might ex fact.
Uh No, we have talked about this off air, and
we both decided what better way to end today's episode
(43:07):
by sharing with you one of our favorite, one of
our favorite first impressions of a pineapple. This comes from
a new voyage and description of the Isthmus of America
by Lionel Wafer in six Lionel Wafer, by the way,
it sounds like a toast of London name. If you
don't know what I mean by that, police instantly, I
(43:30):
know you do, Ben, But any of anyone in listening
have you seven seen Toast of London? It's great Lionel
wafer is perfectly a toast of London name. I'm gonna
leave it at that. But to me this borders on
pineapple poetry. Ben, and I would ask ridiculous historians send
us your pineapple poems. Uh post them on the on
the Facebook group Ridiculous Historians. But Ben, would you like
(43:51):
to lead us off in this pineapple poetry reading? Yeah,
let's let's divide and conquer the same way you would
cut up a pineapple. All these with the booze. That
delicious fruit, which we call the pineapple. In shape not
much ununlike an artitube as big as a man's head.
It grows like a crown on the top of a stoll,
(44:13):
about as big as one's arm and a foot and
a half high. The fruit is ordinarily about six pound wheat,
and is enclosed with short, prickly leaves, like an artitude.
They do not strip, but pair off these leaves to
get at the fruit, which hath no stone or kernel
(44:33):
in It tis very juicing, and some fancy it resemble
the taste of all the most delicious fruits one can
imagine mixed together. It ripens at all times of year,
and is raised from new plants. I like the idea
of I like the idea of pineapple poetry, and I agree.
(44:57):
Would love to hear yours also if you want to,
if you want to get into the musical artistic side
of it, please check out Pineapple Princess by Annette Funicello. Uh,
it's It's jam and Pineapple Jam is great too. Oh man,
I am feeding for pineapple now, so I say, Paul
(45:18):
it Aday with huge, huge thanks to our super producer
Casey Pegram, our guest producer Andrew Howard, who we've got
to have on the show sometime, maybe an episode on Maine.
Yes Maine, that that is where he hails from, and
I think we definitely should do that. Huge thanks to
Alex Williams who composed this theme. Christopher hasciotis here in spirit,
soon to be here in the flesh or in the
(45:38):
you know, the zoom um and Jonathan Stripped and the quister.
I got nothing abad to say about him today. I'm
interested to hear his opinion on pineapple. Uh. Thanks so much, everybody.
We'll see you next time. Foix M. For more podcasts
(46:08):
from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app
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