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