I Stand by My Pineapple-Mayonnaise Sandwich

Margaret Eby
·4 min read

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Photo by Travis Rainey, Food Styling by Stevie Stewart, Prop Styling by Gerri Williams

Long a staple of Southern summers, the tomato sandwich’s simplicity is hard to resist. All you need is a ripe tomato, sliced and layered on bread that has been generously slathered with mayonnaise, seasoned with salt and pepper, and behold, a perfect snack. So what if I told you there was a sandwich that recreated that beautiful balance of acid, fat, salt, and sweetness that you could have all year, no matter how mealy the tomatoes at the market are? Just replace the tomato with a can of pineapple.

That’s usually where I lose my audience. In my book You Gotta Eat, I write about the pineapple sandwich, and reactions thus far have been in the range of “you’re kidding, right?” to “how dare you?” My own beloved editor called it “the most upsetting recipe in the book.” I still stand by it, no matter how deranged it sounds. You think that the fight over pineapple on pizza is intense? Just wait until you introduce the idea of a pineapple mayonnaise sandwich to the room. Perhaps to you it sounds like stoner food or something cobbled together under extreme circumstances (hurricane rations, zombie apocalypse). But open your heart. I dare you.

Not only is it actually delicious—I swear—the pineapple mayonnaise sandwich is a thing in Alabama, where I grew up. Like most instances when someone decided to put something between two slices of bread and call it a sandwich, its origins are murky. We have a collection of certain facts. There is a small town in Alabama called Pine Apple (two words). Pineapple was first profitably canned by James Dole in 1903, and by the 1930s canned pineapple had caught on nationwide. Fresh pineapple not being one of the native crops in the Deep South, we can reasonably infer that some combination of this new convenience, plus the noted Southern tradition of trying everything with mayonnaise, led to the creation of said sandwich. Plus, it’s cheap, filling, and, yes, tasty.

The proper way to make a pineapple sandwich is, first, to make sure you don’t waste time with any element being too fancy. You need commodity white bread, the kind that you could easily squish into a ball. In the South I’d opt for Sunbeam; in Philadelphia, where I live, Wonderbread will do it. Then grab any mayonnaise you have and slather one side of two slices of bread. Don’t skimp on the mayonnaise—it’s not just there for flavor. It locks in the pineapple juice so you don’t have a sandwich that gets too soggy too fast. Then liberally salt and pepper both mayo-ed slices and pile pineapple slices (not chunks) on one of them. Those slices are optimally from a can, but if you have access to fresh pineapple, I’m not going to stop you. Close the sandwich. Cut it if you like. Don’t fuss over it.

Like a good tomato sandwich, this can be juicy, so have napkins ready or just eat it over the sink. The tangy pineapple really benefits from the mayonnaise—basically the same principle as why people like it on cheese pizza, it plays really well with the fat—and the salt and pepper offset the sweetness. Your brain may not believe that it’ll work, but go on, try it. It might be your new favorite snack. And if not, it’s a great story to tell at a party.

You Gotta Eat: Real-Life Strategies for Feeding Yourself When Cooking Feels Impossible

$18.00, Amazon

Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit

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