All Pineapple All the Time - Tiki Drinks and Food

G Gigantalope Member Shinola, California Joined: Aug 01, 2004 Posts: 913	G Gigantalope Posted posted on Fri, Jan 5, 2007 6:47 PM http://www.rampantscotland.com/visit/blvisitdunmore.htm A Pineapple styled house in Scotland built back when having a tropical fruit was like having the Rolling Stones at your house. When we think of explorers charting the vast Pacific, we think of fights, feasts frolic and fornication; islands, jungles, animals, plants and spices awaited men stuck at sea together for months or even years. We think of pineapples as part of these tropical Polynesian feasts, however, sadly, the Pineapples weren't there. The availability of Pineapple has made it easy to over look this splendid morsel, but it has not always been this way. Until recently Pineapples were objects of such excitement, that most people in the world would be very lucky to see one in their entire lives. We know from the presence of certain fruit-specific pests and by its depiction in indigenous stone carvings, that the origin of the pineapple is someplace in present day Paraguay or Brazil. The Indians of the northern part of South America cultivated and traded the fruit for several hundred years all over the Caribbean from small dugout canoes. Columbus didn’t “discover” the pineapple, anymore than he “discovered” America…but he certainly popularized both. His description of this fruit from his second voyage to the Caribbean (also the home of Rum, Pineapple’s frequent sidekick) was almost unbelievable. Legend has it that in 1493, Columbus and his men stumbled onto the Pineapple as they snuck into a vacant Carib Indian village on what’s now called Guadalupe Island. Here they found the fruit in stacks next to piles of butchered human parts, boiling in pots. Thus was launched the legend of the Pineapple to the rest of the world. It epitomized absolute joy that it could be to eat something spectacular, particularly in contrast with being eaten trying to acquire it. Magellan, who found pineapples in Brazil in 1519 underlined the incredible taste and sweetness of this fruit. In a short 50 years, legend of the pineapple made them more valuable than gold or money in Europe, America, Africa and India. It’s hard to imagine the impact of such a thing at a time when sugar as we know it and sweets in general simply didn’t exist. Pineapples are actually not a single fruit, but between 100 and 200 separate flowers which swell up in a cluster, fill with juice and pulp and become the actual fruit we think of. Sailors have long been known to plant the seeds of many exotic things including themselves, in all corners of the globe…the pineapple was no exception. For the next 200 years after it’s “discovery” sailors profligated the pineapple in every place it seemed likely to grow. This was done in part to help battle scurvy and just to spread such an exotic and wonderful food to where they might themselves revisit. Some cultures then adopted the pineapple plant as a barrier and used its spiny leaves to quell intruders around villages. They made carvings of the fruit at gates and doors. Later the pineapple came to symbolize the most prized of all foods, and the symbol of abundance. (Cook actually brought the Pineapple to the Pacific in 1777). The Hawaiian word for pineapple is halakahihi, which means “foreign fruit." In the more developed world, the pineapple’s rarity made it the symbol of the highest ranks of hospitality, influence, wealth and prosperity. In Colonial America, the pineapple was closer to its source but it was still incredibly difficult to acquire. Sweltering sailing ships hauled cargos of fruit which became so rotten that it often all had to be thrown overboard before reaching port Entertainment in those times revolved around meals and company, thus having a pineapple on one’s table, even if only as a centerpiece for guests to view, insured a host the highest esteem. Dining rooms were arranged and doors closed to keep guests in suspense until the unveiling of a host’s display of nature’s bounty. The pinnacle to the meal and festivities would be a pineapple, usually rented by the day from a grocer and displayed like a crown jewel showing guests that the host spared no expense or trouble on them. Louis the XIV raved about their incredible flavor. Not thinking to trim the husks off, he once was cut devouring one. In 1670, England’s Charles II commissioned a portrait of himself receiving a pineapple as a gift. King Charles V, of Spain refused to touch one for fear suffering lacerations. In places like Scotland, Russia, Holland and Sweden people built and heated tiny greenhouses in hopes of cultivating the Rock Star that was the pineapple. George Washington commented that pineapples were the most prized discovery of the tropical world. Sea Captains would try to bring a pineapple home with them, placing it in a window or on a staff in the front of the house as a symbol that the man of the house had returned. In the Victorian Era, tropical plants were all the rage. Progress in science, trade and standards of living shrank the globe. Pineapple’s availability was greater, but its demand was unquenchable. The pineapple was seen everywhere; paintings, silks, gates, furniture, advertising, architecture, ironwork, tin ceilings, decorations and china. To the Industrial Revolution’s slowly emerging middle class, it symbolized a brief encounter with far away paradise. The middle class loved the pineapple and by the 1800s, whimsically-styled pineapples were everywhere. Cakes shaped like pineapples and molded gelatins shaped like pineapples were offerings affordable to most, though most often without the difficult to transport actual fruit. (Ironically the enzyme in the pineapple which is so beneficial to digestion, ruins the ability of gelatin to set) In the 1880s Englishman John Kidwell perfected the canning of pineapple in Hawaii, but the US Government demanded such a high tariff, that it was unfeasible as a business venture. A year later, the tariffs were changed and a man named James Drummond Dole went to Hawaii with $1000.00, and built a multi-million dollar empire on pineapple. Pineapples are "Bromeliads," and are the only edible species of that family. Bromelain, the enzyme found in Pineapple tenderizes meat, is a natural food preservative, treats arthritis and decomposes gels used in photography so silver can be recovered. While it may no longer have longer nine-car-pile-up celebrity status at parties, it is now used as one of the key ingredients in “Natural Male Enhancers” and is used by breweries for keeping proteins from clouding when the beer is chilled. The unmistakable pineapple continues to be one of man’s most intimate friends.

http://www.rampantscotland.com/visit/blvisitdunmore.htm

A Pineapple styled house in Scotland built back when having a tropical fruit was like having the Rolling Stones at your house.

When we think of explorers charting the vast Pacific, we think of fights, feasts frolic and fornication; islands, jungles, animals, plants and spices awaited men stuck at sea together for months or even years. We think of pineapples as part of these tropical Polynesian feasts, however, sadly, the Pineapples weren't there.

The availability of Pineapple has made it easy to over look this splendid morsel, but it has not always been this way. Until recently Pineapples were objects of such excitement, that most people in the world would be very lucky to see one in their entire lives.

We know from the presence of certain fruit-specific pests and by its depiction in indigenous stone carvings, that the origin of the pineapple is someplace in present day Paraguay or Brazil.

The Indians of the northern part of South America cultivated and traded the fruit for several hundred years all over the Caribbean from small dugout canoes.
Columbus didn’t “discover” the pineapple, anymore than he “discovered” America…but he certainly popularized both. His description of this fruit from his second voyage to the Caribbean (also the home of Rum, Pineapple’s frequent sidekick) was almost unbelievable.

Legend has it that in 1493, Columbus and his men stumbled onto the Pineapple as they snuck into a vacant Carib Indian village on what’s now called Guadalupe Island. Here they found the fruit in stacks next to piles of butchered human parts, boiling in pots. Thus was launched the legend of the Pineapple to the rest of the world. It epitomized absolute joy that it could be to eat something spectacular, particularly in contrast with being eaten trying to acquire it.

Magellan, who found pineapples in Brazil in 1519 underlined the incredible taste and sweetness of this fruit. In a short 50 years, legend of the pineapple made them more valuable than gold or money in Europe, America, Africa and India.

It’s hard to imagine the impact of such a thing at a time when sugar as we know it and sweets in general simply didn’t exist.
Pineapples are actually not a single fruit, but between 100 and 200 separate flowers which swell up in a cluster, fill with juice and pulp and become the actual fruit we think of.

Sailors have long been known to plant the seeds of many exotic things including themselves, in all corners of the globe…the pineapple was no exception. For the next 200 years after it’s “discovery” sailors profligated the pineapple in every place it seemed likely to grow. This was done in part to help battle scurvy and just to spread such an exotic and wonderful food to where they might themselves revisit. Some cultures then adopted the pineapple plant as a barrier and used its spiny leaves to quell intruders around villages. They made carvings of the fruit at gates and doors.

Later the pineapple came to symbolize the most prized of all foods, and the symbol of abundance. (Cook actually brought the Pineapple to the Pacific in 1777). The Hawaiian word for pineapple is halakahihi, which means “foreign fruit."
In the more developed world, the pineapple’s rarity made it the symbol of the highest ranks of hospitality, influence, wealth and prosperity.

In Colonial America, the pineapple was closer to its source but it was still incredibly difficult to acquire. Sweltering sailing ships hauled cargos of fruit which became so rotten that it often all had to be thrown overboard before reaching port

Entertainment in those times revolved around meals and company, thus having a pineapple on one’s table, even if only as a centerpiece for guests to view, insured a host the highest esteem. Dining rooms were arranged and doors closed to keep guests in suspense until the unveiling of a host’s display of nature’s bounty. The pinnacle to the meal and festivities would be a pineapple, usually rented by the day from a grocer and displayed like a crown jewel showing guests that the host spared no expense or trouble on them.

Louis the XIV raved about their incredible flavor. Not thinking to trim the husks off, he once was cut devouring one. In 1670, England’s Charles II commissioned a portrait of himself receiving a pineapple as a gift. King Charles V, of Spain refused to touch one for fear suffering lacerations.

In places like Scotland, Russia, Holland and Sweden people built and heated tiny greenhouses in hopes of cultivating the Rock Star that was the pineapple. George Washington commented that pineapples were the most prized discovery of the tropical world.

Sea Captains would try to bring a pineapple home with them, placing it in a window or on a staff in the front of the house as a symbol that the man of the house had returned.

In the Victorian Era, tropical plants were all the rage. Progress in science, trade and standards of living shrank the globe. Pineapple’s availability was greater, but its demand was unquenchable. The pineapple was seen everywhere; paintings, silks, gates, furniture, advertising, architecture, ironwork, tin ceilings, decorations and china. To the Industrial Revolution’s slowly emerging middle class, it symbolized a brief encounter with far away paradise.

The middle class loved the pineapple and by the 1800s, whimsically-styled pineapples were everywhere. Cakes shaped like pineapples and molded gelatins shaped like pineapples were offerings affordable to most, though most often without the difficult to transport actual fruit. (Ironically the enzyme in the pineapple which is so beneficial to digestion, ruins the ability of gelatin to set)

In the 1880s Englishman John Kidwell perfected the canning of pineapple in Hawaii, but the US Government demanded such a high tariff, that it was unfeasible as a business venture. A year later, the tariffs were changed and a man named James Drummond Dole went to Hawaii with $1000.00, and built a multi-million dollar empire on pineapple.

Pineapples are "Bromeliads," and are the only edible species of that family.
Bromelain, the enzyme found in Pineapple tenderizes meat, is a natural food preservative, treats arthritis and decomposes gels used in photography so silver can be recovered.
While it may no longer have longer nine-car-pile-up celebrity status at parties, it is now used as one of the key ingredients in “Natural Male Enhancers” and is used by breweries for keeping proteins from clouding when the beer is chilled. The unmistakable pineapple continues to be one of man’s most intimate friends.

Post #277010 by Gigantalope on Fri, Jan 5, 2007 6:47 PM