In their wild state, pineapples are small, hard and bitter, and emerge from a thorny cup of razor-sharp leaves – a single fruit to each plant. They were domesticated into sweetness over hundreds of years by the Tupí-Guaraní tribe of Amazonia. It’s a long way from the tinned pineapple chunks destined to finish their days as a topping for a Hawaiian-themed pizza.

To finish up canned in syrup seems an ignoble end for the fruit once so prized in the West that it was known as ‘the King of Fruits’. From its first introduction into Europe in the sixteenth century, the pineapple displayed all the qualities necessary to join the most exclusive