The King of Fruits: Pineapples and Class Culture in British Cookbooks from 1661-1850

By Elizabeth Schmidt

In 1789, John Taylor sent a pineapple to his mother Jean in Scotland; the pineapple was from his cousin’s plantation in Jamaica, where John lived and worked as a merchant. Not having seen the fruit before, Jean turned to friends for guidance. On November 20, she wrote to John: “I have not looked in to the Pine Apple yet as they tell me its only to show out a Grand Table & not to be eat.” Four months later she added, “I do not intend to open the Pin Apple till you Come.” Laying on maternal guilt to convince him to return for a visit, she promised John a party in his honor where the pineapple could sit center stage.

Native to South America, the pineapple was cultivated by Indigenous peoples across the Caribbean. The plant was called hoyriri or anona by the Tupi, and iaiama by the Taino. Columbus and his crew were probably the first Europeans to taste the fruit in Guadalupe, and they brought back a case of pineapples for King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Only one survived unspoiled enough to eat, but King Ferdinand declared it his favorite fruit after just one taste. In England, the first pineapple was presented to the king somewhere around 1661, a “queen-pine” from Barbados.[1] The fruit is quite beautiful: the hexagonal eyes around the body grow in a spiral sequence that are often cited as a three-dimensional representation of the Golden Ratio, and the leaves on the top of the pineapple are commonly referred to as its “crown.”[2]

In a painting by Hendrick Danckerts, ca. 1675-1680, King Charles II is presented with a pineapple. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
In a painting by Hendrick Danckerts, ca. 1675-1680, King Charles II is presented with a pineapple. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Why did Jean’s friends tell her it was not to be eaten, and only “to show”? Even today, producers harvest and ship pineapples before they are perfectly ripe to ensure that the fruit reaches its destination while still attractive, since ripe fruit bruises easily and rots quickly. Unfortunately, once a pineapple is harvested, it does not continue to ripen.[3]

In eighteenth-century Scotland, Jean’s pineapple would have looked attractive but tasted terrible. Cookbook authors capitalized on this, offering instructions to preserve pineapples whole for repeated display. First seen in Elizabeth Raffald’s The Experienced English House-keeper (1769), preservation recipes were offered for readers who desired pineapple centerpieces. The fruit was brined for five days in saltwater, then boiled in a saucepan with the brining liquid. Then, the sugaring process began: the cook would submerge the pineapple in a thin sugar syrup for a week, remove it, re-boil the syrup, and then submerge again. This process was replicated over eight to ten weeks, with the syrup re-boiled two or three times in that period to prevent molding. Francis Collingwood refined these instructions in The Universal Cook and Country Housekeeper (1792): the pineapple was left in the jar for six to eight weeks, re-boiling the syrup every week. The final instruction was to remove the pineapple from the jar and cover it with a thick, cool, sugar syrup that had been boiled with slices of ginger, a natural preservative. According to Raffald and Collingwood, a pineapple preserved in this way would “keep several years, if tied down close with a bladder.” This preservation process had been used on fruit in Europe since the fourteenth century. Preservation played a key role in both cuisine and medicine through the eighteenth century, especially as diet remained a key element in managing health.[4]. In fact, Collingwood’s 1792 cookbook had similar instructions to preserve cherries with their stalks and leaves to “make a very pretty appearance in a desert [sic] by candle-light.”

By the mid-eighteenth century, aristocrats could buy pineapples grown in “pine-houses” rather than imported from the Caribbean. Dutch horticulturist Agnes Block experimented with propagating new pineapple plants from the crown of the fruit and successfully produced the first European-grown specimen in 1687. Later, horticulturists realized they could import whole plants from the West Indies: the plant is drought-resistant and capable of storing water in its leaves to keep it alive.[5] Soon elite estates across Britain built their own pine-houses. Cookbooks aimed at the upper classes introduced recipes for pineapple desserts as early as 1732, when Richard Bradley included a pineapple tart in The Country Housewife and Lady’s Director. In 1770, Borella’s The Court and Country Confectioner, a book clearly aimed at either royal or aristocratic houses, included two recipes for “Anana, or Pine Apple Cream Ices.” By the mid-nineteenth century, pineapple recipes were much more numerous yet still aimed at the upper classes. Charles Francatelli’s The Modern Cook (1846) had ten recipes with pineapple, including fritters, souffles, and brioche. Yet Francatelli was the chef to Queen Victoria, and his cookbook did not purport to be written for the average English housewife.

The practice of displaying pineapples continued long after recipes were developed for baking them into sweet treats. In P. Masters’s Young Cook’s Assistant, and Housekeeper’s Guide (1841), the recipe for “Pine Apple Cream” tells readers that “the pine must be quite ripe – one too ripe for the table will do for this purpose.” Cookbooks authored for the “middling classes” kept including the preservation recipe first written by Raffald, as pineapples remained quite expensive. A 1787 memoir of a London actress tells the story of finding pineapples for sale for one pound per fruit. The author remarks of the actress that “for the first time since I knew her, she declined to gratify her inclination at such an expence.”[6] At the coronation of King George IV in 1821, hundreds of hothouse pineapples were purchased for the banquet.[7] Some were certainly eaten, but others were displayed on tables as exotic centerpieces, as showcased in a painting of the event by Denis Dighton (1821)

The Third and Last Challenge by the Champion during King George IV's Coronation Banquet in Westminster Hall (1821). At intervals along the table, you can see the yellow pineapples with their green crowns. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The Third and Last Challenge by the Champion during King George IV’s Coronation Banquet in Westminster Hall (1821). At intervals along the table, you can see the yellow pineapples with their green crowns. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

So, while John probably thought he was sending his mother an exotic, expensive, and exciting gift, he actually sent her a project: a fruit that required significant labor to transform it into a centerpiece she could showcase.
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Elizabeth M. Schmidt is a recent PhD from the University of California Santa Barbara specializing in British Atlantic foodways of the eighteenth century. From roast beef to turtle soup, she researches the intersection of eating and identity during the Age of Revolutions and imperial turmoil. Using microhistories of figures like sailors, military generals, merchants, and housewives, she explores the impact of foodways on discussions of identity, belonging, inclusion, and exclusions. Elizabeth also enjoys cooking historical manuscript recipes, translating eighteenth and nineteenth century instructions, measurements, and tools into their modern equivalent to learn what she can about culinary knowledge and labor.

[1] Kaori O’Connor, Pineapple: A Global History (London: Reaktion Books, 2013), 17-20.

[2] Judithlynne Carson, “Fibonacci Numbers and Pineapple Phyllotaxy,” The Two-Year College Mathematics Journal 9:3 (June 1978): 132.

[3] Fran Beauman, The Pineapple: King of Fruits (London: Chatto & Windus, 2005), 6.

[4] Anne Stobart, Household Medicine in Seventeenth-Century England (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016).

[5] Bauman, The Pineapple, 31; O’Connor, Pineapple, 24.

[6] Elizabeth Steele, The Memoirs of Mrs. Sophia Baddeley. Late of Drury-Lane Theatre (Dublin, 1787), 90.

[7] Sir Roy Strong, Coronation: A History of Kingship and the British Monarchy (London: Harper Collins, 2005), 33; James Jennings, Two Thousand Five Hundred Practical Recipes in Family Cookery (London, 1837), lv.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Amanda Herbert (October 29, 2025). The King of Fruits: Pineapples and Class Culture in British Cookbooks from 1661-1850. The Recipes Project. Retrieved November 17, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/15288


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