Hawaii: Today in History 11/13

11-13-1895 First shipment of canned pineapple from Hawaii

Canned Pineapple Anniversary Day, the 13th of November, marks the reputed first shipment of canned pineapple from Hawaii in 1895.

CooksInfo.com is uncertain, though, if this is actually true. It certainly is much quoted, and 1895 as a year seems plausible, but we haven’t been able to find yet any evidence to back this up. To confuse matters, some sources say that this is when canned pineapple first “arrived”, but don’t say arrived “where”; others say “shipped” (though again, not shipped from where, to where). And no one says who did the shipping.

Reputedly, this was also the day in 1898 when Alfred W. Eames, founder of Del Monte, arrived in Hawaii to start growing pineapple.

In any event, is there a better day to make that legendary dessert, a Pineapple-Upside Down Cake?

The Hawaiian Pineapple Packers’ Association (HPPA) began funding research at the experiment station of the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association (HSPA) in 1914 to supplement the work of the HAES. The HSPA experiment station was established in 1895, more than five years before the HAES existed, to carry out research on sugarcane. The joint research program included the breeding of pineapple to attempt to develop a Smooth Cayenne cultivar that was resistant to mealybug wilt (Lyon, 1915). In 1917 the Trustees of the HPPA leased 0.8 ha (2 acres) of land for the planting of seedlings produced by the program and additional land was leased in 1919 (Auchter, 1951). ‘Smooth Cayenne’ clones with partial resistance to mealybug wilt were found but breeding and selection for mealybug wilt resistance was not pursued because the resistance was insufficient (Rohrbach et al., 1988). By 1930, the wilt problem had become so serious that some growers considered establishing plantations outside of Hawaii (Rohrbach et al., 1988). Research showed that ants moved the mealybugs into the field so research focused on a way to keep ants out of the field. It was found in 1925 that ant fences bordering fields and sprayed with petroleum products would keep the ants out of the fields. Research by Calpak showed that pineapple border guard beds planted perpendicular to rows in the field would achieve the same result because ants preferred to move down rows rather than across them. The Calpak technique remained in use in some fields into the 1950s (Rohrbach et al., 1988); however, once effective insecticides became available, they replaced the physical controls (Rohrbach and Johnson, 2003).