Johnalewis74's Blog
Johnalewis74's posts about: Pineapple
Aug 28, 2007 | 11:55 AM PST
Tags: Tropical Plants , Pineapple
The Colonial Pineapple Trade...
Ships brought in preserved pineapples from Caribbean islands as expensive sweetmeats... pineapple chunks candied, glazed and packed in sugar. The actual whole fruit was even more costly and difficult to obtain. Wooden ship travel in the tropics was hot, humid and slow, often rotting pineapple cargoes before they could be landed. Only the fastest ships and best of weather conditions could deliver ripe pineapples to the confectionery shops in the New World.
A hostesses's ability to have a pineapple for an important dining event said as much about her rank as it did about her resourcefulness, given that the street trade in available fresh pineapples could be as brisk as it was bitchy. So sought after were the prickly fruits that colonial confectioners sometimes rented them to households by the day. Later, the same fruit was sold to other, more affluent clients who actually ate it. As you can imagine, hostesses would have gone to great lengths to conceal the fact that the pineapple that was the centerpiece of their table display and a central topic of their guests' conversation was only rented.
Pineapple as a Hospitality Symbol...
In larger, well-to-do homes, the dining room doors were kept closed to heighten visitors suspense about the table being readed on the other side. At the appointed moment, the doors were flung open to reveal the evening's main event. Visitors confronted with pineapple-topped food displays felt honored by a hostess who spared no expense to ensure her guest's dining pleasure.
In this manner, the fruit which was the visual keystone of the feast naturally came to symbolize the high spirits of the social events themselves; the image of the pineapple coming to express the sense of welcome, good cheer, human warmth and family affection inherent to such gracious home gatherings.
During the last century, the art of food display centered around the pineapple, has faded to a quaint craft now associated with the making of certain kinds of Christmas decorations. These holiday fabrications are one of the few vestiges of an era when all life revolved around the dining room table; a less complicated era that left us the enduring icon of the colonial pineapple, a truly American fruit, symbolizing our founding society's abiding commitment to hospitality as well as its fondest memories of families, friends and good times.
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