Grinding Pineapple on a Metate (Simple Grindstone, Saddle Quern)

Inspired by this oil painting that shows a woman grinding pineapple to make juicel, I thought it was time to have a go myself.

Now, you might say, who in their right minds would get down on their knees to grind a pineapple. Well, it’s all part of a big project to get a better handle on “simple” grindstones. They weren’t actually either simple or primitive as I will explain at great length shortly.

But for now I’ll just say that I want to explore (a) the huge number of ways grindstones were used in Mexico until about a generation ago and (b) to understand the variety of grindstones used around the world.

I should really describe this project up front and will soon. But the pineapple grind snuck up on me because of the posts on aguas frescas.

And here’s a blow up of the pineapple grinder down on the bottom right. To her right is the metate (grindstone), behind that a pot for what I know not, below the metate a bowl to collect the juice of the pineapple (I assume) while she is straining what I assume to be pineapple pulp through a traditional strainer

And here’s my kitchen floor ready to go: metate, pineapple in chunks, bowl to catch the juice, bowl for straining the pulp (you’ll see the strainer a couple of photos down).

And here I am starting to grind.

Grinding pineapple is a cinch. Compared to grinding grains it takes no effort at all. The only problem is that with grains the ground material, whether its wet or dry, grabs the surface of the metate and offers some resistance. Not so with the pineapple. You start your downward stroke and the mano slides forward all too easily. But the juice comes out easily.

Here’s Rufina doing the second batch. You can see the puddle of juice (what looks like a bright blue trapezoid is actually a reflection of her top in the pool of juice).

What turned out to be tricky, as I’d rather expected, is getting the juice into the bowl. The lower lip of the grindstone turns up so that ground maize won’t fall off (at least that’s my theory). But that means the juice puddles. We heaved the metate up by its back leg and even so the juice tended to dribble around the bottom end and on to the floor.

Hypothesis. Perhaps there were special juice making metates with a different bottom. Even today metates have different sizes and shapes for different uses. Must ask an older generation about juice.

But they would have to be the wealthy. The poor weren’t grinding pineapple for themselves. It was a luxury fruit. Don Bruno, my gardener, now in his mid 70s, remembers how in his youth the arrieros, muleteers, walked three days down to the tierra caliente (the warm regions) to buy fruits like pineapple and mango and then three days back. Not cheap.

Anyway, that’s drifting off. Here’s Rufina tipping the metate. Heavy work.

And there you can see the traditional strainer on the right. Here’s a better view with the pulp.

So what’s the bottom line? or lines?

1. With the metate it was really easy to juice a pineapple. Of course in Europe (or in Mexico) you could use a pestle and mortar but it’s much fiddlier. The eighteenth and nineteenth century Mexican kitchen could do lots of things a European one either couldn’t or, if it could, only with much more effort. Of course both depended on servants.

2. I’m still not clear whether the grinder tried for maximum juice and tipped it off the metate or whether she simply crushed the pineapple and extracted the juice with the sieve. No way of telling from the experiment, I think.

3. Rufina has the last word. She thought this was hilarious. “Muy eficaz la licuadora,” (the blender’s very efficient) she said as she left.

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