The Pineapple: King of Fruits [Hardcover]

Really enjoyed this book - it covers a lot of areas of interest from colonialism and exploration to consumerism, advertising and international trade, and fascinating aspects of English and American social history, particularly gardening and entertaining. Well researched, lots of cross references, many images that bring the story to life.

Unlike other histories told in dry, scientific terms, The Pineapple is also an amusing read - full of wit, and peppered with personal comments from the author that make the whole thing come to life.

My only criticism is that the evolving role of the pineapple in 20th century eating, drinking and entertaining is barely touched upon. The rest of the book is so thorough, that I'm hoping there are plans for a second book that focuses on the 20th century, perhaps even told through historic recipes from early uses as showy garnish to its continuing starring role in cocktails ever since Trader Vic and Don the Beachcomber first started mixing, to its health benefits, as well as the continuing popularity of the pineapple as a decorative symbol.

"The Pineapple" is a wonderful feast of ideas and insights, beautiful written and well-illustrated. Here the photographs add a lot to the subject./ They have been selected with great care and do a lot to carry the narrative forward. Beauman really does a superb job of narrating the story of pineapple's introduction into Western culture as an icon of wealth and social standing and then as a symbol of a middle-class comfort food. It is a story of mass production, modern transportation, and availability. If supply and demand ever needed illustrating, this is a worthy source. I am most pleased to have found an author who is not afraid to speak honestly about race and class, free of the awful sort of obfuscating political correctness and impenetrable jargon that mars so much writing. This is a classic of concise writing, done with that unique talent the Brits have for making complex ideas simple and clear. the author has done an admirable bit for modern scholarship, made available to the general public, as history always should be.

I live on a former pineapple farm on Maui, and I thought I knew something about pineapples. But I was surprised to discover from Fran Beauman's "The Pineapple" that pineapples were grown in England in the 18th century.

It was a social, not a gustatory phenomenon, despite the praise heaped on the fruit. "In its first 150 years of celebrity, never has a food been so eulogised," she says.

It was a feat to grow and ripen a pineapple in cold, rainy England, and the cost of each was equivalent to the price of a new coach. Like a Hermes purse today, you could rent a pineapple for parties to pretend to other people that you were rich.

Today only one pinery still functions in England, and apparently all the ones that existed in colonial America have disappeared. Beauman claims to be the first to have recovered the history of pineapples in revolutionary America, where competing social claims vied for supremacy.

As a symbol of the hated (by some) English aristocracy, growing pines was disparaged, but as a sign of continental sophistication, it was aspired to.

Unfortunately, rather than writing a straight social history of the pineapple, Beauman tries to present the plant as an active player, using its skills to seduce Europeans into spreading it throughout the world. She is not skillful enough to carry off this conceit.

That the pine was endowed with social significance is certain; that is was quite as important in the overall social scene as Beauman makes it seems doubtful.

Her theme is that from a royal fruit - the very rare early examples were always given to kings - democratization robbed the king of fruits of its eclat.

Steamships made it possible to export fresh pines to rich countries and canned pineapple everywhere.

So? You could write a similar history about mutton.

Since people did not start eating pineapples (in Europe) until late, it is not strictly correct to call it an example of conspicuous consumption. It wasn't consumed.

It would be more convincing to describe the English production of pineapples as a form of Georgian potlatch, where the pine was passed from table to table until it rotted.

People who could not afford real pineapples made imitations out of stone, pottery, iron and wallpaper, and this could have been presented as an example of a cargo cult of a rising middle class anxious to attract real aristocratic pineapples.

But Beauman is not witty enough to do that.

"The Pineapple" is full of tasty tidbits but, like a plate of the fruit, does not amount to a satisfying meal.

Beauman winds up with a tantalizing social factoid, which, however, she does not explain. In 2000, the Parisian fashion house Chloe put out a line of swimsuits for women decorated with a pineapple on the crotch. This is evidently supposed to show the lingering power of the fantasy of the royal fruit, but in what way is not explained.