6. When Pineapples Were a Miracle Fruit
Today, pineapples are often just a Dole can and can opener away and can be had for a dollar or less. As such, it might be hard to grasp just how exotic and rare they once used to be. When Christopher Columbus returned from his second voyage in 1496, he brought back a consignment of pineapples. Only one of them survived the sea passage without rotting, but that one was enough to send the Spanish court into raptures. One courtier wrote that “its flavor excels all other fruits”. It was understandable, considering that sweet things were not as common in Europe back then as they are today.
Refined sugar back in those days was rare and extremely expensive, while fruits were only available in season. As such, a ripe sweet pineapple could have been the tastiest thing that a European of that era had ever tasted. An even greater factor was the exotic appearance: pineapples looked like nothing Europeans had seen before. On top of that, in an era when sugar was believed to possess medicinal qualities, it was not a far leap for sweet pineapples to come to be seen as miracle fruits with healing properties similar to those of sugar.