The tropical fruit that endured a long and fascinating journey
Beautiful Botanicals by Joanne Howdle
The pineapple (Ananas comosus) is a member of the Bromeliaceae family, which is indigenous to South America and originates as a wild plant around the Paraná River that runs through Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay.
The pineapple is a herbaceous perennial, which on average grows to 1 to 1.5 metres high. The botanical has a short, tufted, stocky stem with tough, waxy leaves.
When a pineapple plant is ready to produce fruit, it sends up a flower stalk. Over a period of months, the stalk grows taller, rising above the leaves of the botanical, the purple flowers drop off, and the structure swells into a green pineapple.
About five months after first emerging as a flower stalk, the fruit then turns from green to yellow/orange, signalling that it is ripening and ready to harvest and eat.
The first written reference to the pineapple fruit is found in French cosmographer, explorer, and Franciscan priest André Thevet’s (1516-1590) book The New Found World (1568). Thevet describes the fruit as a nana – which is thought to have come from nanas, a Native American word for ‘pine’.
This led to the first part of the botanical’s scientific binomial Ananas the second part of the name comosus – ‘tufted’ refers to the stem of the plant.
Archaeological evidence for the cultivation of the pineapple has been found dating to 1200-800 BC in Peru and 200 BC-700 AD, in Mexico. The fruit had already been domesticated by the Native Americans before the arrival of the Italian explorer and navigator Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), who was the first European to encounter the pineapple fruit.
Columbus took the botanical back to Spain, introducing it as piña de Indes, meaning “pine of the Indians”. Eventually, in the 17th century, the botanical was named pineapple in English because its appearance was reminiscent of the pinecone.
The pineapple was not successfully cultivated in Europe until Dutch businessperson and economist Pieter de la Court (1618-1685) developed greenhouse horticulture near Leiden sometime around 1658. This invention allowed pineapples to be grown in Europe rather than imported.
However, the labour required to grow the botanical in greenhouses called ‘pineries’ was enormous. Thus, pineapples became a symbol of wealth. They were such a rare, desirable item that the botanical was too valuable to eat – a single pineapple fruit was worth thousands of pounds and often the same one would be paraded from event to event, until it was rotten.
Pineapples became so popular in Europe that they became a motif in Baroque and Neo-Classical architecture to represent wealth and good taste.
The fruit of the pineapple has been used in traditional medicine for centuries to treat a variety of ailments such as digestive disorders, and to reduce pain and swelling, especially of the nose, sinuses, gums, and other body parts after injury and surgery as the botanical contains various vitamins, minerals, and enzymes such as bromelain.
The sweet and crunchy fruit of the pineapple can be used an ingredient in cakes, desserts, and puddings, to make curries, salsas, marinades, and sweet and sour sauces. It can be used in a salad or in chicken and fish dishes and can even be roasted whole.
Pineapple juice is the main ingredient in cocktails such as the piña colada and in the drink tepache – a slightly fermented drink made from pineapple peel and brown sugar.
In gin and vodka manufacture pineapple is used to add a slightly tangy character to the spirit. The marriage between the classic, juniper forward profile of gin and the zesty sweetness of pineapple makes for a spirit which delivers a wonderful fresh and vibrant tropical fruit flavour.
• Joanne Howdle is interpretation and engagement manager at the multi-award winning Dunnet Bay Distillers Ltd.
