Few dishes have sparked as much debate as so-called Hawaiian pizza (pizza topped with tomato sauce, pineapple, ham, and cheese) (Dixon 2019). However, Hawaiian pizza is neither the first nor the only dish named after the Hawaiian Islands that contains the combination of pineapple, ham, and cheese. In 1950s Germany, TV-cook Clemens Wilmenrod popularized a dish he named “Toast Hawaii,” an open-faced sandwich quite similar to Hawaiian pizza, the only difference being that instead of a pizza base, toast is used to carry pineapple, ham, and cheese. Toast Hawaii was a weeknight household staple in Germany from the 1960s to the 1980s and is considered a “typical German” dish by many Germans. No written record exists on how Wilmenrod came to name the dish after the Hawaiian Islands. Clearly, the combination of pineapple, ham, and cheese is not part of traditional Hawaiian food culture. Pineapple is indigenous to...
University of California Press