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Pineapples are the perfect summertime snack,
juicy and delicious, and when you close

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your eyes they instantly transport you to
a tropical beach on some Caribbean island.

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But for the majority of history they
were considered the ultimate delicacy by European nobility

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who just couldn't get enough of them. From snack to status symbol, the

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pineapple has graced many a king and
queen's palace courts, while outside of them

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they took on a rather mythical quality, akin to some sort of precious jewel.

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Today we'll track the pineapple's voyage across
the seas and into the history books

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as it became synonymous with the very
peak of royal dere ago. These are

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the bizarre but true stories from history
and in some way involved food. I'm

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Nick Charlie Key, and this is
the Fantastic History of Food. Once again,

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I wanted to say a huge thank
you to all of my supporters on

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Patreon. You help me out so
much in getting this show made, and

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today I want to send a special
shout out to my new supporter who joined

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since the last episode, Sarah Thompson. Sarah, thank you so much for

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joining up and supporting the show.
If you would like to support the show

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in the same way as Sarah has, it costs just two dollars a month,

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and when you sign up, you'll
have your name mentioned in an episode,

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just like you've heard today. But
please, as always, this is

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absolutely pressure free, because more than
anything, I love the fact that you

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just listen to the show and you
get some enjoyment out of it, and

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that is the basic reason why I
keep making this show. And as always,

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back to the episode, there is
no nobler fruit in the universe.

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These were the words spoken by Jean
de Lay when writing about the pineapple.

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He was not alone in his love
for the tropical fruit, and in fact,

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was borderline nonchalant about it when compared
to how a man named Charles Lamb

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once described it. Pleasure bordering on
pain from the fierceness and insanity of her

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relish, like a lover's kisses,
She biteth me. But how and why

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had these men become so enamored by
this spiky specimen? While as with so

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many stories from this time in history, this one finds its inception with one

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of Christopher Columbus's voyages back from the
Americas, not the pineapple itself is a

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fruit originally native to southern Brazil and
Paraguay, where they would grow wild along

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the banks of the parah on a
Paraguay river. From there, it spread

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throughout South America as it was slowly
domesticated by local people groups. There is

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archaeological evidence of pineapples having been cultivated
as early as twelve hundred BC in Peru

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and two hundred BC in Mexico,
where it was farmed by both the Mayans

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and the Aztecs. By the late
fourteen hundreds, just in time for Columbus's

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arrival, the cultivation of pineapples had
spread so widely that they had become a

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staple food stuff in the meso American
diet. So it was no surprise then

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that as Columbus fell in love with
the fruit, he decided he just had

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to bring some back to Spain with
him. Now, this was his second

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voyage to be exact, and somewhere
deep in his ship's cargo hold, amongst

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our aforementioned tomatoes from the were Wolf
episode, tobacco, pumpkins, parrots and

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entire menagerie of tropical animals, sat
a small crate of pineapples, and due

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to his lack of experience with the
fruit and how to handle it. They

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unfortunately did not last very long on
board. When they arrived in port and

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were unloading their cargo, they found
just a rotten, sticky mess where once

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the crate of pineapples had sat.
But in a fortuitous twist of fate,

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just one singular pineapple remained intact and
could therefore be presented to King Ferdinand of

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Spain as the sole survivor of its
tropical brethren, and it was immediately a

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smash hit with the King. His
son's tutor, Peter Marta, even recorded

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the King's reaction to tasting it due
to his overwhelming excitement about the fruit.

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The most Invincible King Ferdinand relates that
he has eaten yet another fruit brought from

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those countries. It is like a
pine nut in form and color, covered

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with scales, and firmer than a
melon, but its flavor excels all other

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fruits. It was not just delicious
to eat, but it was beautiful to

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look at too. King Ferdinand's envoy
to Panama wrote of it, it is

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the most beautiful of any fruits I
have seen. I do not suppose there

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is in the whole world any other
fruit of so exquisite and lovely an appearance.

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In our modern world amidst year round
produce availability and sugar being crammed into

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every possible food stuff, it is
sometimes easy to forget that at this time

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in Renaissance Europe, cane sugar especially
was an incredibly expensive commodity reserved for the

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wealthy. Tasting sweet things in general
was a luxury, and at the time

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fruit was highly seasonal. There were
no commonly eaten sweet foods, so when

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the pineapple came along, it must
have been like fireworks going off in their

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brains as the sugary sweetness exploded their
dopamine receptors. It's no surprise then that

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it was held in such high esteem
and would only further be elevated in time

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to come. There is an interesting
facet of the pineapple arrival in Europe.

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When it did, as told by
fran Bowman in her book The Pine,

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it coincided with the explosion of the
written word being spread more broadly throughout the

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general populations. In the mid fifteenth
century alone, more than one hundred and

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thirty million books flooded into Europe as
anyone with a story to tell began to

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write their experiences down, and this
included religious texts, and the Bible became

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more widely accessible than at any other
time in history, and it soon became

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apparent that pineapples were not mentioned anywhere
in the Bible, or any ancient European

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texts for that matter, either,
and so they had no pre existing stigmas

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attached to them, like so many
other fruits did, the obvious one being

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the apple with its connection to the
snake in the garden of Eden. Another

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interesting one being the Greek myth of
Persephone and how eating just a handful of

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pomegranate seed at the wrong time condemned
her to a life in the underworld alongside

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hades. But the pineapple was brand
new to the public consciousness and therefore could

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be molded into whatever narrative those in
power chose for it. It was first

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named the King of Fruits by the
French priest Father Dutertre, and in the

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centuries that followed it became almost synonymous
with royalty, in no small part thanks

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to how its spiky leaves on top
resembled a king's crown. Almost all of

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the pineapples that were brought to Europe
were reserved for consumption by the members of

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various royal families, and because of
this they became somewhat mythologized in popular culture.

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Very few people had ever even seen
a pineapple with their own eyes,

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let alone ever had the opportunity to
taste one, and this association with royalty

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would become a problem for the fruit
when in sixteen forty two Oliver Cromwell began

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his civil war with the monarchy,
ultimately leading to the execution of King Charles

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the First in sixteen forty nine.
To Cromwell, pineapples represented everything he despised

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about the royals, who lived,
according to him, in insufferable luxury.

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There'd be a short lived exile for
the tropical delight until in sixteen sixty Charles

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the Second was thrust upon the throne. Known as the Merry Monarch, he

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did away with Cromwell's staunch puritanical ways
and ushered in dining halls once again laden

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with glistening meats, wobbling jellies,
and intricate dessert sculptures to be enjoyed by

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all in his court. And he
leant hard into this persona, milking this

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opportunity for all It was worth.
He named the fruit the King pine And

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in sixteen sixty eight, when a
French ambassador came to mediate a debit about

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Saint KITT's, an island in the
Caribbean, Charles had one of his naval

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ships bring him a pineapple from one
of their own Caribbean colonies on Barbados.

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Once it arrived, he had it
perched atop a towering pyramid of fruit brought

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into the meeting room once the dinner
had been finished. And now this was

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a not so subtle show of force
to the French ambassador to let him know

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that the English were a dominant power
in the region, a sort of ambassadorial

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version of the playground Torento, we've
got pineapples, you don't now. This

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was a master's stroke from the King, And as words spread of this power

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play, he found himself becoming even
more and more attached to the pineapple as

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a status symbol. He even had
a painting of himself commissioned where he is

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standing in front of his enormous palace
being handed a pineapple by one of his

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gardeners who is kneeling before him.
Now, this was a fanciful concept that

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he would use for publicity purposes,
as there was no way his gardener could

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ever rarely do that because at the
time, pineapples could still not be grown

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in Europe's more northerly climates. Europe
at this point was a hotbed for political

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jockeying, and as England continued to
expand their colonies, it was the Dutch

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who were actually hot on their heels. For years, England flaunted the pineapple

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as proof of their global reach and
superiority, but were caught wholly off guard

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in sixteen eighty two. It was
at this that the Dutch built the very

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first greenhouse, with a cloth merchant
by the name of Peter de la Court,

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discovering a breakthrough in the pineapple growing
process, allowing them to produce their

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very own home grown crops. Now
English nobility was sent into a frenzy upon

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learning about this, and their jealousy
threatened to bubble over into conflict until a

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former English princess married William of Orange, making this Dutch monarch the de facto

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king of England. By the middle
of the seventeenth century, Britons had figured

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out how to grow their own pineapples
as well, which triggered a country wide

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pineapple craze. It became a status
symbol for the upper classes to have their

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own custom built greenhouses to cultivate their
own pineapples. And this was no small

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endeavor, as these so called pineries
needed twenty four hour care at an almost

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never ending supply of coal to keep
the greenhouses at the pineapples preferred tropical temperatures.

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Even then, the plants took three
to four years to bloom with their

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first fruit, and then each plant
only produced one pineapple per season, so

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as you can see, the vast
expense of cultivating these fruits then meant that

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once you had one, it became
considered wasteful to simply eat it. No,

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pineapples had moved to being simply high
status ornaments to be flaunted by those

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wealthy enough to own one. Upper
class women would walk along the high street

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simply carrying a pineapple the way modern
women might carry an expensive designer bag.

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They would be passed around from one
woman to another until the pineapple began to

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rot. Even then, as the
maids would fetch and deliver these pineapples between

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their ladies, they had to find
ingenious ways to conceal them, as if

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they were seen on the streets with
a pineapple, there was the high risk

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that some opportunistic thief may attack them
and steal the precious fruit. Some enterprising

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businessman even opened a pineapple rental boutique, where for those who didn't quite have

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enough money to own their own pineapple, you could simply rent one for the

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evening if you were attending a swanky
function. Now they became so synonymous with

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everything good and beautiful that a popular
phrase even entered common language, whereby when

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someone was describing something as being either
incredibly valuable or precious, they would say

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that it was a pineapple of the
finest flavor. It was even included in

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the Georgian era play called The Rivals, where one character compliments another by saying

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that he is the very pineapple of
politeness. But as globalization took root and

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steamships allowed more and more people to
travel long distances in relative comfort, such

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delicacies as pineapples began to lose their
mythical reputation as being reserved solely for adventurers

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and nobility. The final knell in
the upper classes pineapple hoard in coffin came

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in the early nineteen hundreds, when
James Dole launched his mass pineapple plantations in

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Hawaii, meaning that for the first
time in history, pineapple prices became affordable

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enough that almost anyone could purchase their
very own fruit. Nowadays, it's not

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at all shocking to see supermarket shells
packed full of whole pineapples or diced up

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slices in the refrigerated sections. They
are so readily available anywhere you shop all

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year round that it's almost impossible to
fathom how at one point they were the

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very pinnacle of high society luxury.
So the next time you're at your local

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supermarket, why not pick up this
most noble of all fruits and hold it

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aloft as you walk back to your
car, imagining that you too are a

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Renaissance era royal. You'll certainly get
the same sorts of stairs from passers by

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as they once did, but this
time for a very different reason. This

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show is made entirely by me,
Nick Charlie Key, with our theme music

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having been made by the Enigma that
is the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. If you'd

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like to support the show, the
simplest way to do that is over on

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our Patreon account. There's just one
option, So for just two bucks a

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month, you'll help me keep producing
this show, and in return, you'll

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get your name forever etched onto our
supporter's Wall of Fame over on our website

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and then maybe listen out for your
name in an upcoming episode. So,

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until next time, bon apetite,