Nenas

Ananas comosus. Like many good things that grow in South-East Asia, pineapples were cultivated long ago by the Indians of tropical America and were carried by colonizers to anywhere else where they could be made to grow—including European greenhouses, where fresh ones were cosseted into becoming expensive gifts for royalty. Commercial growers in the tropics quickly developed races and varieties with the characteristics they wanted for the market; the first cannery in Singapore was operating by the late 1880s. But even big business cannot spoil the pineapple; it remains a favourite fruit for almost everyone, and succeeds somehow in being both commonplace and exotic at the same time. It is particularly good as a dessert fruit because it contains chemicals that aid digestion. Unripe fruit, indeed, are said to do this to the extent of being violently purgative, but I have known many Javanese eat them as part of a dish of Rujak with no ill-effects. In Java, the best pineapples are those from Bogor.