Pine apples and pine cones

Matt:

Why is a pineapple called a pineapple?

— Nameless, via email

In the Middle Ages, Europeans called pretty much all fruit and fruitlike things “apples.” The “fruit” of the pine tree (the pine cone) was called a pine apple. When explorers brought back from South America what we know today as a pineapple, the British thought it looked a lot like their pine apple, so that’s the name that stuck. After decades of confusion and ruined recipes, the pine apple eventually became the pine cone.