Pineapple pizza: subjective hate, objective taste

by Darian Bazile

Advertising Tweet: Pineapple pizza may be controversial, but there are objective reasons for why people like it: [link]

In January, Gudni Thorlacius Johannesson, president of Iceland, made a statement during a high school visit with regards to one of the most controversial topics on the internet: pineapple pizza. He jokingly said that he would ban pineapple on pizza if he could, but he later backpedaled, remembering his responsibility: “Presidents should not have unlimited power. I would not want to hold this position if I could pass laws forbidding that which I don’t like.”

Now if I had any power whatsoever, I would absolutely ban pineapple pizza because it’s a crime in my eyes. In fact, I’m sure that a lot of people would do the same, if they were in Johannesson’s shoes, as many were in agreement with his statements. However, there clearly are people that like pineapple pizza in this world, people with bad opinions. So, what is the deal with pineapple pizza?

Sam Panopoulos holding his creation of pineapple on pizza. (Derek Ruttan, QMI Agency)

Some backstory: pineapple pizza is synonymous with Hawaiian pizza, a mixture of pineapple chunks and ham on a slice of pizza, a disgusting triangle to some and a delicious savory treat to others. Despite the name, Hawaiian pizza does not hail from Hawaii, but from a joker up north: Sam Panopoulos, a Greece-born Canadian. In the 1950s, pizza was a relative unknown in Canada and there was this emerging fascination with the culture of Hawaii, which became an American state in 1959. Panopoulos, the absolute madman, experimented with pizza since there were no real established rules for pizza making in Canada. So, on that faithful day in 1962, lacking topping ingredients but having Hawaiian-canned pineapple on hand, he dunked that on a slice and made history.

Today, the range of pizza has increased, with a greater availability of ingredients and better pizzas established by years of experimentation. There’s now such things as buffalo chicken pizza that gives pizza a spicy kick and pizzas with stuffed crusts, combining traditional pizzas with cheesy breadsticks. Yet in this glorious pizza age, we still have pineapple as a popular topping – a controversial one! Appearance wise, putting fruit on top of something greasy and cheesy just seems disgusting, while others get past this and finds the taste appealing. So, why is it that pineapple pizza works for its fans?

One straightforward answer is that the tastes simply blend together. “I like pineapple pizza because the ham and the pineapple balance out each other… It’s like when you have a sweet sauce on meat like orange chicken,” local high schooler and pineapple pizza lover Neith Pereira said. This isn’t even just an opinion, but an apparent fact. Food website Bon Appetit reached out to sensory scientist Paul Breslin and flavor chemist Joe Peragine on how un-like food combinations work together. On pineapple pizza, Breslin stated that “really fatty foods, like ham and other meats, tend to leave your mouth feeling fatty, which is an undesirable state.” Of course, most pizzas are already inherently greasy and fatty as well. The acidic, sweet taste of pineapple, however, cuts through the greasy flavors, which creates a balance between them that ultimately works.


Another, more complex answer, can be found in the chemistry of food. A study for Scientific Reports in 2011 called “Flavor network and the principles of food pairings” examined why certain ingredient pairings work together. There are flavor compounds in ingredients and ingredients with similar compounds chemically work together. Heard of white chocolate on caviar? Presumably you haven’t and you probably think that combination sounds awful. However, they share similar compounds like trimethylamine, so they actually taste well together, despite essentially being chocolate with fish eggs. The components of the base pizza – cheese and bread – already work on an inherent level, but as it happens they do work with pineapple – on a chemical basis, rather than being inherently good. Pineapple being able to work with ham is just the cherry on top.

Pineapple pizza advertised on Domino's New Zealand website.


The study also found that western cuisines embrace combining ingredients by chemical compounds more often than eastern cuisines. This was discovered by examining the recipes of common cuisines and the ingredients that are used in it, to see if there are any shared compounds. So, it’s possible that the contempt toward pineapple pizza is partly because of cultural differences, people of different cultures not being used to seemingly un-like combinations in food.


Taste science and chemical compounds provide objective, scientific reasons for why pineapple pizza works. However, personal taste still factors into the perception of pineapple pizza. Chef Gordon Ramsay recently said, as a guest host on The Nightly Show, that pineapple doesn’t belong on pizza, so it’s not as if the culinary world unanimously upholds it. At the end of the day, pineapple pizza isn’t inherently bad, rather, it’s personal preferences that keeps it controversial.

Sources:

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