I’m eating some “fresh” pineapple that’s been cored but not sliced (I did the slicing) and packaged for individual sale in the produce section at Kroger. Good stuff.
But I got to wondering if other fruits and vegetables may have gotten their names from being nice combinations of tastes and something else like the “pine” part of “pineapple.” Pineapples do look a bit like pine cones even though I have yet to see a pine cone the size of a pineapple, and the taste is a bit like an apple (at least a few varieties). And I have always wondered why they made hand grenades to be shaped like pineapples (though smaller).
I put this in Cafe Society but don’t much care where it might get moved because of the paths it may take, but I would enjoy some exploration of All Things Pineapple as a way to start from a thread title and see what folks might have to say.
I’m also content with the notion that the OP has said it all.
That sure debunks what I always thought about grenades, Johnny L.A..
Other fruits and veggies with combination names that might have some parallels with pineapples:
Crabapple
Mock Orange (has anybody ever eaten one of these and lived to describe it?)
Skunk cabbage
Cauliflower (the cauli part is for cabbage if my dictionary is telling the truth)
Grapefruit (I’m sorry but I never saw the connection with grapes)
that’s right, it must be related to Dutch “Kool” and German “Kohl”. Cauliflower is “Bloemkool” in Dutch and “Blumenkohl” in German, or flowercabbage. I guess that, for a cabbage, cauliflower does look a lot like a flower.
Nice to know. Looking up kohl led to kohlrabi which is, etymologically at least, a combination of cabbage and turnip. Nice! Has me jonesing for some rutabaga. I lie.
The Kool connection has me wondering if some wit at the tobacco company pulled a fast one with the name Kool for one of the early menthol cigarettes, when what he was really thinking was that they tasted like cabbage. Wonder if he was into rabbit tobacco…
Yikes! I’m not even going to ask! Sounds raunchy, though. Whatever those other fruits and/or veggies are, I’ll stick with pine cones and apples. Come to think of it (no pun intended) I like pine nuts and lentils.
Other varieties of apples that I may leave for others to try:
Speaking of fruits and grenades, I learned recently (on an Alton Brown show) that the pomegranate’s name in French is “la grenade,” and the explosive device was named for the fruit.
That’s because it is - a cabbage flower.Cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, brussel sprouts and kohlrabi are all the same vegetable, with a few minor artificial modifications.
I scored this item a couple years ago at a junk shop in Milwaukee. Pineapple grenade shell
It’s nearly impossible to not pick it up when you see it. It is very heavy and bigger than you might think.
Pineapple is an archaic name for a pine cone. The fruit is called that because it superficially resembles a pine cone, not because it tastes like an apple (which, IMHO, it does not).
Apple was simply a generic term for fruit, so pineapple = fruit of the pine tree.
Apparently grapefruit grows in clusters, which made someone think of bunches of grapes. It seems like a stretch, but I haven’t seen a better explanation.
En francais, the word for ‘potato’ is pomme de terre which translates to ‘apple of the earth’ or ‘ground apple’. Well it actually translates to ‘potato’ but you know what I mean.
That’s nice to know. The only grapefruits I have ever seen were individual and nowhere near a tree. For that matter, except for photos of them, I’ve never seen any citrus fruits on trees. Apples, peaches, plums, crabapples, pears, persimmons, pecans, walnuts, but no citrus. Strawberries, blackberries, scuppernongs, muscadines, watermelons, cantaloupes and other vine fruits, but (as best I can recall) no wine or table grapes on the vine.
