A dairy-free dip inspired by a retro cheese ball recipe and an essay on how pineapple is anything but Hawaiian.

I adore finger foods. Growing up, one of my fondest memories is what my mother deemed “predator” night, where we were left to our own devices to come up with something to eat for dinner. I recently saw a video on Instagram where a woman expressed a similar sentiment to her mother about the times she had served a specific dish and her fond memories of it, only to find out those were the times her mother was struggling the most and thoughts she was failing as a mother. I thought that was a beautiful example, resonating personally, of how we tend to shame ourselves for things that don’t actually matter or may be good things after all.

On predator nights, I typically ended up with a bowl of Cheerios, a monstrous spoonful of creamy peanut butter, and too many chocolate chips to count. Add in a glass of milk, and I was the happiest child on earth. That snack remains one of the most comforting to me as an adult.

My favorite nights were when predator nights happened post-holiday or potluck. My God. For a food lover, that’s an absolute goldmine. A bit of this, a bit of that. Knorr’s spinach dip packets swirled into sour cream and mayo along with the frozen spinach that comes in blocks - tucked into a “Hawaiian” bread bowl, pinwheels made with veggie cream cheese, mini quiches, and a “Hawaiian” cheese ball that I could take down whole in one sitting were among my favorite dishes.

While sitting with this recipe and the narrative I wanted to build around it, I kept returning to everything we call “Hawaiian.” Hawaiian pizza, Hawaiian chicken, Hawaiian cheese ball — a catch-all term used for anything containing pineapple.

Pineapple had its star moment in the 1970s with an increased interest in Hawaiian culture. Known as the Hawaiian Renaissance, the 70s saw a resurgence of pride in indigenous culture, language, and arts. Pineapples became symbolic of this cultural revival, making their way into food, fashion, and art, solidifying their place in the idealized aesthetic of Hawaii.

There’s only one problem. Pineapples are not Hawaiian.

Before 1770, pineapples didn’t exist on the islands of Hawaii as they were native to South America, and until the very late 1880s, pineapples weren’t grown for commercial purposes in Hawaii at all.

James Dole changed all that, though his brother played a pivotal role in allowing him to do so, so I should back up a bit.

Sanford Dole was a sugar tycoon born to missionaries living in Hawaii. Originally from Maine, his parents were American protestant missionaries from New England who felt a duty to preach the gospel to Hawaiians.

In 1893, Sanford led the coup d‘état against Queen Lili‘uokalani and was named president of the new provincial government. Fueled by the threat of tariffs on his sugar production, he believed annexation by the United States would shield him from such obligations. After the successful annexation in 1898, his brother James headed to the islands and purchased a 60-acre plantation on O‘ahu in 1899. After some trial and error, he experimented with several crops and decided that the pineapple would become his “Golden Fruit.”

Pineapple production in Hawaii quickly flourished, quickly taking over the state. To meet demand, Dole invested in an innovative new machine that would skin, core, and then slice the fruit, increasing yields and their bottom line by reducing labor and reducing something else in return, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

Over the next 50 years, the Hawaiian Pineapple Company became the largest in the world, with sugar and pineapples dominating the Hawaiian economy. By the 1930s, Hawaii produced over 12 million cases of pineapple annually, with Dole being responsible for 75 percent of the global supply.

With the pineapple, and Hawaii as a whole, now being marketed as exotic, pineapples started to dominate travel brochures, marketing messages, and food choices in mainstream America.

One advertising campaign pushed pineapple on American housewives by encouraging them to “Don’t ask for pineapples alone. Insist on Hawaiian Pineapple!”

A 1927 booklet titled The Kingdom That Grew Out of A Little Boy's Garden by Marion Mason Hale, published by Hawaiian Pineapple Company showcases the story of Dole along with numerous pineapple recipes. It paints the Dole story as one that “blossomed into one of the most romantic stories ever known.” The booklet positions him and his empire as an American success story when, in reality, the story is one of violence, greed, and imperialism.

The ad, The Perfect Servant Lives in Honolulu, isn’t speaking about its workers; it’s referring to Ginaca, the machine used to process Dole pineapples.
At first glance, maybe it’s just an ad showcasing how efficient and modern their operation is.
If you look at it a bit deeper, you’ll see the cultural ideologies of the time underlining the need for this 1928 ad in the first place.

The late 1800s and early 1900s saw increased prejudice against Asian immigrant workers, leading companies to build machines like Ginaca to replace them, underscoring their commitment to “cleanliness” for their American consumers. This ad was meant to mitigate Americans’ concerns surrounding the cleanliness of workers by minimizing human, i.e., Asian, involvement in the operation. It was a sly way to sidestep the racial anxieties of the time without having to take a stance either way. Keep the cheap Asian labor, advertise your state-of-the-art machines and “cleanliness,” all the while benefitting from both the cheap labor and American trust.

What better way to do that than to whitewash their workers? Along with the image of a racially diverse set of workers, the ad reads, “Rubber gloves, clean white aprons, and caps are worn by every worker,” ensuring that “bare hands never touch the golden fruit.” “White” being synonymous with “clean.”

Today, commercial pineapple and sugar operations have mostly ceased on the islands of Hawaii as labor costs are much cheaper in places like the Philippines. However, the damage is far from over. The now-defunct farms were acquired by investors and left to rot, becoming overgrown with invasive plants that became fuel for brush fires and rerouting water irrigation to their luxury properties, leaving indigenous Hawaiians downstream bone dry.

Dole’s mission is “To make the world a healthier place.” To me, deforestation, human rights violations, and the use of enslaved persons and child labor do not equate to making the world a healthier place.

Can you culturally appropriate something that was never a part of the culture in the first place? When I started writing this essay, my thoughts aligned with the focus on calling anything with pineapple “Hawaiian” as cultural appropriation. But what about when that culture is imposed on a population? One they did not ask for. One that they were forced to integrate into. Cultural imposition, if you will.

Listen, I’m 100% guilty of calling a recipe with pineapple “Hawaiian.” I’m sure I’ve published at least a handful of recipes in the last decade of recipe development using the term just out of sheer ignorance. Ignorance that is fueled by large advertising budgets that can morph an entire populace into its own marketing platform, stripping it of its identity and imposing on it a new one.

In the words of Adam Horovitz of the Beastie Boys, “I'd rather be a hypocrite than the same person forever." Through my work, I am committed to being a hypocrite. If I wasn’t, then that means my views never change, I never learn anything, and I stay the same forever. I am wholly uninterested in leading a life of that sort. To grow is to learn, and to learn is to do better.

So this recipe is a Pineapple Cherry Pecan Dip. I hope you love it, and I hope you never call it Hawaiian.

Pineapple Cherry Pecan Dip

A dairy-free dip inspired by a retro cheese ball recipe and an essay on how pineapple is anything but Hawaiian.