The gorgeous taste of fully ripened pineapple, imposing as a southern island king crowned in glory, is yours to enjoy in every soft and juicy Kasugai Pineapple Gummy.
Another great product description from Kasugai. (Remember their Grape Gummies?)
I really like the idea that a taste can be “gorgeous.”
Prepare topping first.
Set aside while mixing cake part.
Serves 6 to 8.
This postcard is in honor of Chronicler’s Kitchen Krafts find. I haven’t tried the recipe yet, but surely any company-sponsored recipe found on the back of a cheap, hyper-saturated, out-of-register postcard from the mid-60s has got to be delicious, right?
I love this postcard. Perhaps it’s the unusual presentation of the pineapples, or the hand-tinting, or the fact that the name of the city in Ceylon reminds me of a Martin Sexton song. Or perhaps I’m just a sucker for any postcard featuring a fabulous pineapple babe.
There’s actually a variety of pineapple called “Red Ceylon” (ananas comosus CV ‘Red Ceylon’), which is, quite appropriately, the most common pineapple grown in Sri Lanka (nee Ceylon) and India.
“The leaves are dark green with broad red central stripe and red spines on the margins. The fruit is small, 3 to 5 lbs (1.36-2.25 kg), yellow externally; has a thin core and very sweet flesh.”
Source: Purdue University’s
Center for New Crops & Plants Products
However, in 2000, Géo Coppens D’Eeckenbrugge and Freddy Leal had the audacity to suggest in The Application of the International Code of Nomenclature to Pineapple Cultivars that the “Red Ceylon” was the horticultural equivalent of an urban legend:
“Following the code, ‘Smooth Cayenne’ is clearly a cultivar….’Queen’ is also a cultivar. A detailed study might allow distinguishing clear differences between local populations or between clonal selections. However no sufficient data exist. Shoot and slip numbers are particularly variable traits. Some selections exhibit particular vigor, as ‘Mc Gregor’, but they cannot be distinguished from other similar selections. Thus, names as ‘Mauritius,’ ‘Malacca,’ ‘Red Ceylon,’ and ‘Buitenzorg.’ ‘Ripley Queen’, ‘Alexandra’ and ‘Mc Gregor’ must be considered synonyms to ‘Queen’. Only the tetraploid ‘Z’ or ‘James Queen’, found in South Africa (Nyenhuis, 1974), must be considered a distinct cultivar.”
Rubbish! And if you’re going to consolidate the naming conventions, surely an exotic name like “Red Ceylon” should win out over something as bland as “Queen.”
But they’re right about “Buitenzorg,” which should be taken out behind the nomenclature shed and put out of its misery.
Kirsten, in Savannah, Georgia, sent in these photos of two pineapples gracing the side garden of the house on the corner of Whitaker and Gaston, in Savannah’s Landmark Historic District.
I think they’re a nice combination of the old and the new…the architectural and the artistic…the columnar and the contemporary…the weathered and the welded…the Grecian and the green-ish…
OK, I’ll stop.
Kirsten, by the way, is the proprietress of TurnOfTheCenturies.com, which I need to keep in mind for next year’s Christmas cards. Or perhaps I should order some of her hypothetical housewarming cards for my hypothetical housewarming next year.
Let’s get one thing straight, people: The pineapple is not a toy. Just look at this description of the pineapple plant’s foliage:
“The long, pointed leaves are 20-72 in. in length, usually needle-tipped and generally bearing sharp, upcurved spines on the margins.”
That’s not a fruit, that’s a weapon! Yet look how blithely The Pineapple Girl holds her spiky namesake. Oblivious to the hazards, she beams at the camera, not realizing that one of those pointed, needle-tipped, sharp spines is about to puncture her cornea.
But that’s not all…
Toxicity
Workers who cut up pineapples have their fingerprints almost completely obliterated by pressure and the keratolytic effect of bromelain (calcium oxalate crystals and citric acid were excluded as the cause).
The recurved hooks on the left margins can painfully injure one.
Mitchell and Rook (1979) also restated earlier work on “pineapple estate pyosis” occurring in workers who gather the fruits, probably an acarus infestation with secondary bacterial infection.
Angular stomatitis can result from eating the fruit.
Ethyl acrylate, found in the fruits, produced sensitisation in 10 of 24 subjects “by a maximisation test.” Ethyl acrylate is used in creams, detergents, food, lotions, perfumes, and soaps.
In “therapeutic doses”, bromelain may cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, skin rash, and menorrhagia. Watt and Breyer-Brandwijk (1969-1979) restate a report, unavailable to me, of unusual toxic symptoms following ingestion of the fruit, heart failure with cyanosis and ecchymoses, followed by collapse and coma and sometimes death (Duke, 1984b).
Purdue University
Center for New Crops & Plant Products
So, Pineapple Upside-Down Cake: “Topsy-Turvy Treat” or “Dessert of Death?”