If you’ve been our guest at an event catered by Culinary Crafts, you may have noticed a pineapple or two slipped into the décor, lurking behind a steak carving table or nestled between rows of highball glasses. Or, if you’ve ever visited our offices in Utah County, you probably couldn’t miss the decorative pineapples on the tables, in the windowsills, and on the front desk. (A quick glance around the office just now revealed twelve pineapples, by my count.)
Why all the pineapples?
To us, the pineapple is much more than a tasty fruit. It’s a reminder of the ethic of true hospitality and the level of service we strive to give.
But how did pineapples become a world-wide symbol of hospitality, generosity, and service?
Well, that’s an interesting story!
The Strange History of the Pineapple
Pineapples have been around at least 4,000 years, originating from the area around present-day Paraguay and Brazil. However, they were entirely unknown to Europeans until Columbus brought some from his second voyage to the New World in 1493. Columbus had stumbled upon the exotic fruit growing in a small village on a Caribbean island. He decided to bring back a shipment to Spain, but the pineapples rotted on the long return voyage. By the time Columbus arrived, only one single fruit was suitable to present to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.
But that single fruit was all it took to impress the king and queen. After tasting the wonderous new treat, Ferdinand reportedly announced that “its flavor excels all other fruits.” From that moment, pineapples became a sensation that sent Europe into a frenzy.
“The King of Fruits”
From the way Europeans gushed about pineapples, you’d think they had just fallen in love for the first time!
The English writer Charles Lamb described the taste of pineapple as “pleasure bordering on pain…like a lovers’ kisses.” One Dutch businessman, Pieter de la Court, was so enamored of the fruit that he wrote, “One can never be tire’d with looking on it.” The French explorer Jean de Léry admired the pineapple’s “beauty of appearance, delicate fragrance, excellent flavor,” concluding that “there is no nobler fruit in the universe.” Multiple explorers wrote that pineapples must have been the apple with which “Eve tempted Adam.”
Perhaps the highest praise for the pineapple came from the French physician Pierre Pomet who called it “the King of Fruits, because it is much the finest and best of all that are upon the Face of the Earth. It is for this Reason that the King of Kings has plac’d a Crown upon the Head of it, which is an essential mark of its Royalty.”
So God gave the pineapple a “crown” to mark it as the King of Fruits? High praise indeed!
A Very Different Meaning
Today, we see pineapple as a sign of hospitality, generosity, and warm welcome, but it wasn’t always interpreted that way. For a couple of centuries—especially in Europe—pineapples held a very different connotation.
To Europeans, pineapples seemed so rare and valuable that they became a symbol of wealth and status. To serve a pineapple at one’s party was a show of opulence, extravagance, and power. After all, if you owned a pineapple—especially a fresh one—well then, you must really be somebody!
The Rarest of Fruits
What made pineapples so incredibly rare?
First, a harvested pineapple will stay fresh only for about a month. It took longer than that to make the trans-Atlantic voyage by sailing ship, so delivering fresh pineapples to Europe was extremely difficult.
Second, pineapples wouldn’t grow in Europe’s climate. It would take centuries of horticultural innovations and the development of hothouses before Europeans could start growing their own. And even then, a single pineapple took two to three years to grow. Procuring a fresh pineapple anywhere in Europe was so difficult that a single pineapple could cost as much as $8,000 in today’s currency.
But the fact that pineapples were extremely rare and prohibitively expensive only added to their desirability and mystique.
The Fruit of Kings
For a long time, throughout the 15th and 16th centuries, the only Europeans who could afford pineapples were royalty and the extremely wealthy. Royal houses went to great lengths to buy pineapples to display at the most luxurious occasions. Historical accounts from the time describe extravagant banquets where tables were piled with mountains of fresh fruit—pears, apples, grapes, plums—with a single majestic pineapple perched at the top like a monarch on its throne. (The funny thing is, there’s a good chance that the pineapple at the top of the heap was rotten, having been reused for multiple social occasions.)
While most Europeans had seen or heard about pineapples, relatively few had actually tasted one. British philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) alluded to this fact when he described the difference between knowledge we gain through experience versus what we know only secondhand. Locke argued that you can only really know things when you’ve experienced them—otherwise it’s like imagining the taste of a pineapple if you’ve never had one.
It may be hard to imagine a world where you would live your entire life without ever tasting a pineapple, but that was Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Even if you went to a high-end social event where the host had rented a pineapple for the evening—yes, renting out pineapples was a real business!—you wouldn’t expect it to be served to guests. The pineapple was only for show.
Of course, if you happened to be royalty you might have found yourself on the receiving end of a pineapple gift now and then. Such a rare and coveted item made the perfect gift for that king or queen in your life who already has everything.
Side note:
Charles II of England commissioned a painting of himself that showed a man kneeling before him, offering him a pineapple. Tradition holds that the kneeling man was Charles’ Royal Gardner, John Rose, and that the pineapple he is offering to Charles was the first pineapple ever cultivated in England. At least one of these facts must be inaccurate, however, since John Rose died in 1677, and pineapples were not successfully grown in Britain until the 1700s.
The practice of giving away pineapples—truly a gift fit for a king—was how the pineapple began to take on the symbolism of generosity and hospitality.
The Great Pineapple War
This is where the story of the pineapple starts to get a little crazy.
Remember back in the 1950s and 60s, when the United States and the former Soviet Union raced to establish superiority in outer space? Well, a similar race had happened 300 years earlier between the English and the Dutch—except instead of getting to the moon, their goal was to be the first to grow a pineapple.
The analogy may sound far-fetched, but it’s not.
See, in the 1600s the English and the Dutch were battling it out for superiority, literally and figuratively. Both countries had built vast overseas empires in Asian, Africa, and the Americas. Both boasted powerful navies to protect their merchant ships. And both wanted to prove that they were, in every way, the best. And that was the most visible way to prove that superiority? Being the first to grow pineapples on their home soil.
It kind of made sense.
While both England and the Dutch Republic could get pineapples from their own colonies in the Caribbean (the Dutch controlled Suriname and parts of Brazil, while the English held Jamaica and Barbados), transporting those pineapples to Europe was still a huge challenge. The country that managed to grow their own pineapples would not only have an unlimited supply of the big-ticket luxury item of their day; they’d have bragging rights about their scientific know-how.
So, throughout the 1600s, while the English and Dutch navies fought a series of wars to establish control of the seas, their horticulturalists were at home waging a different kind of war.
Things Heat Up
The main problem the European horticulturalists faced was temperature. To grow pineapples in the cold European climes, they needed to simulate tropical conditions. Pineapples are temperamental and need consistent warmth of 68-86° year-round. Europe’s climate was too cold and too inconsistent. Pineapples also require high humidity with well-drained, sandy soil. To overcome all those problems, Europeans had to learn to control temperature (of the soil as well as the air), airflow, moisture, and light. Moreover, they had to maintain all those factors consistently, day and night, for 2-3 years even to grow a single pineapple.
It was a huge investment—not so unlike shooting for the moon. But the race was on.
The Dutch enjoyed an early advantage. Not only did their maritime and trading power give them access to live exotic plants from all over the world, but they were already leaders in scientific and horticultural knowledge. (Think Dutch tulips.) Dutch and English nobles alike poured immense money and effort into building glass hothouses with peat-fed ovens that piped warm air and heated the soil from below. They hired boys to feed the stoves 24-7, day after day and year after year, nonstop.
And the winner is…
Finally, in 1685, a Dutch art collector and horticulturist named Agnes Block succeeded in fruiting the first European pineapple. No doubt it was a blow to English pride, but the Brits weren’t about to give up. The English nobility scrambled to catch up, hiring Dutch gardeners and developing complex, coal-heated “pineries” specifically for growing pineapples.
Even though Europeans could finally start producing home-grown pineapples, it did little to lower the price of the fruit…at least at first. With all the supplies and fuel required, it cost about $16,000 in today’s dollars to grow a single pineapple fruit. Pineapples were still well out of reach of commoners.
Still, the significance and symbolism of the pineapple were starting to change.
Pineapples in America
Across the ocean in the American colonies, things were a little different.
Although the colonists tried to follow European customs and trends in many ways, the American colonies were located much nearer to pineapple-producing countries, so they didn’t have quite as much of a pineapple shortage as their European counterparts. On this side of the Atlantic, pineapples were rare, but they weren’t so incredibly precious that only the upper class could ever hope to taste one. Here, the symbolism of the pineapple was less about exclusivity and extravagance, and more a sign of culture and good taste…in both senses of the word.
If you look at the way the word “pineapple” was used at the time, you can see its association with culture and refined manners. For example, in a play called The Rivals (which was very popular around the time of the American Revolution), one character demonstrates this connotation of the word when he compliments another character by saying, “He is the very pineapple of politeness.”
Side note:
The play is best known for a character, Mrs. Malaprop, who uses incorrect but similar-sounding words to comedic effect. This is where we get the term “malapropism.”
To the Americans, pineapples represented hospitality from early on. Some New England sea captains, on returning from a voyage, would post a fresh pineapple in front of their home to signify their safe return and to invite neighbors inside to share their good fortune and hear about their adventures. Among the elites—especially in Southern port cities like Charleston, Savannah, and Norfolk—hosts were admired for their generosity when they served pineapples to their guests.
One of those aspiring Southern socialites was George Washington. As a young man of 19, on his one and only trip off the continent, Washington tasted his first pineapple in Barbados. He fell in love with several fruits he encountered on that trip, including the “China orange” and the “avagado,” Throughout his life, Washington followed the practice of ordering quantities of pineapples and sharing them with visitors to his Mount Vernon estate. (He was never able to grow them in the greenhouse he lovingly built.) Washington’s use of pineapples as a token of generosity and goodwill was typical of the American colonial gentry. Rather than a mere ornamental showpiece as in Europe, pineapples in the colonies were more often a special treat served to guests or given as gifts to betoken great affection or respect.
Pineapples, Pineapples, Everywhere
The positive connotations of the pineapple showed up throughout colonial society. We find pineapples carved into early American bedposts and table legs, engraved in silverware and serving pieces, and woven into quilts and fabrics. They show up on gateposts and fences, doorways and weathervanes, wallpaper, and ceramics from the time. Pineapples often appeared on the signs of taverns and inns to suggest both welcome and classiness. Anywhere that hospitality, cordiality, or courtesy was concerned, the pineapple was certain to appear.
This tradition of generosity and hospitality is the reason we love what the pineapple stands for.
What Hospitality Means to Us
At Culinary Crafts, hospitality isn’t just something we do. It’s who we are.
Our parents started this company when Ryan and Kaleb were toddlers and Meagan wasn’t yet a roll in the proofing drawer. We grew up at our parents’ elbows, watching them serve tables and wash dishes long into the night, only to be up early the next morning mixing dough and prepping stations. For 40 years we learned the meaning of hospitality from seeing the delight our parents felt taking care of other people. When Dad poured his heart into his cooking and Mary insisted that a recipe be tweaked for the twentieth time because it still wasn’t perfect, we understood that it wasn’t really about the food. It wasn’t even about taking pride in one’s work—not really. At its core, hospitality is about love.
We love what we do because we love those we do it for. We care about food because we care about the team we make it with, the guests we serve it to, and the clients whose day we make into something unforgettable.
The pineapples are reminders to us of the grand history and tradition of hospitality. It’s about much, much more than serving good food. It’s about creating an experience so welcoming, so seamless, and so full of genuine thoughtfulness that our guests feel deeply and truly taken care of.
True hospitality is about treating people like royalty, the way we’d all like to be treated now and then.
Presenters of Pineapples
Even though we put enormous effort into perfecting our menus and executing our food at the highest level of excellence, we realize that the food itself is not the main goal. Food is just a vehicle, a way to mark occasions and make moments special. Our real goal is to help every guest experience genuine hospitality.
But what is “genuine hospitality”?
In today’s world, it’s a rare experience to be treated in a way that makes you feel profoundly cared for, but “rare” is exactly what we’re going for at Culinary Crafts. We see ourselves as givers of good gifts, presenters of pineapples, the people whose privilege it is to make your special event perfect. We are entrusted with some of the most important days of our clients’ lives, and we’ll do whatever it takes to get it right.
The sight of pineapples reminds us what an honor it is to work in such a unique industry, rich in history and ripe with opportunities to exceed expectations, make memories, and create moments of joy.
So if you see a pineapple snuck into the décor at your event, just consider it a little gift—a token that means we were thinking of you. We hope you leave your event thinking, “Wow, those Culinary Crafts folks — why, they’re the very pineapple of politeness!”
Or maybe the hummingbird cake of hospitality?
The crème brûlée of conviviality?
The walnut tart of welcome?
