West Germany's grilled toast of ham, tinned pineapple, and melted cheese, crowned with a glacé cherry
Origin: West Germany
From the journey of Pineapple.
Toast Hawaii is the single most revealing thing post-war Europe did with a tin of pineapple, and it was made on television. Clemens Wilmenrod, born Carl Clemens Hahn, was an out-of-work actor who became West Germany's first television cook, and he presented the dish in the mid-1950s on a programme whose title promised dinner in ten minutes. A slice of white toast, a slice of boiled ham, a ring of tinned pineapple, a slice of processed cheese over the top, grilled until the cheese ran, and a glacé cherry set in the hole of the pineapple ring. It is impossible to overstate how exotic that looked in 1955. West Germany was ten years out of a war and a few years out of rationing, the Wirtschaftswunder was just beginning to put money in ordinary pockets, and a tinned tropical fruit from Hawaii was a small, affordable piece of somewhere else. Wilmenrod almost certainly did not invent the combination, which has clear American antecedents in grilled ham and pineapple, but he named it, he put it in front of a national audience, and he made it aspirational. Germany has been eating it ever since. Its reputation has followed a predictable arc. It was modern in the 1950s, ubiquitous in the 1960s and 1970s, a byword for provincial bad taste by the 1990s, and is now treated with a certain affection as a genuine artefact of the period, which is roughly what happened to the British prawn cocktail over the same decades. There is a technical reason the dish works better than its reputation suggests, and it is worth respecting. Pineapple contains bromelain, an enzyme that digests protein and would otherwise turn the ham unpleasantly soft. Tinned pineapple has been heat-treated, which destroys the enzyme completely, so the tin is not a compromise here but the correct ingredient. Made with fresh pineapple and left to stand, the dish genuinely deteriorates.
Tinned pineapple is correct and is not a substitute for fresh. Bromelain, the protein-digesting enzyme in fresh pineapple, turns cured ham soft and slightly slimy on standing; canning heat-treats the fruit and destroys the enzyme entirely. If you insist on fresh, griddle the rings first for a minute a side, which does the same job. Wilmenrod's original specified Chesterkäse, the mild orange processed cheese widely sold in Germany at the time. Gouda or a young Emmental gives a better flavour and melts just as well; a strong cheddar unbalances the dish. Common German variations add a smear of mustard or of tomato ketchup under the ham, or use turkey in place of pork. A Toast Hawaii Deluxe substitutes a slice of veal escalope for the ham. Serve with a green salad in a sharp vinaigrette, which the dish badly needs.
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