When: June 27
International Pineapple Day on June 27th celebrates a fruit with one of the most dramatic social histories in food culture. The pineapple went from a symbol of extreme wealth and power accessible only to European royalty, to a canned pantry staple, to a pizza topping that divides the internet. No fruit has traveled a stranger social arc.
In 17th century England, a single pineapple cost the equivalent of $8,000 in today's money — wealthy hosts rented them by the evening to display at dinner parties as a status symbol, returning them uneaten.
When Columbus encountered the pineapple in Guadeloupe in 1493, he was looking at a fruit that couldn't be grown in Europe and took months to reach it by ship. He brought pineapples back anyway. By the 17th century, a single pineapple in England cost the equivalent of $8,000–$10,000 in today's money. Wealthy hosts who couldn't afford to buy one could rent one — a pineapple would travel from dinner party to dinner party as a centerpiece, never eaten, returned at the end of the evening to continue its tour. People carried rented pineapples through the streets of London simply to be seen in possession of one. The pineapple originated in the region between southern Brazil and Paraguay, where indigenous peoples had cultivated it for centuries before European contact. Spanish and Portuguese sailors spread it through their trade routes in the 16th century, and the Dutch built heated greenhouses to grow it in the Netherlands — prohibitively expensive structures that only kings and the very...