This dessert has been a family favourite since I was a little girl. I always loved how the hidden fruit could be perfectly presented after baking.

I decided to check on the history of this dish today. Lo and behold - look what I found from http://www.kitchenproject.com/

The History of Pineapple Upside Down Cake

This cake has a fascinating history :It was invented because several other convenience items were developed that gave the housewife time to make a cake pretty as well as delicious.

The idea of cooking a cake upside down, is an old technique that started centuries ago when cakes were cooked in cast iron skillets. It was easy for cook to add fruit and sugar in the bottom of the pan and a simple cake batter on top and put it over the fire to cook. Then flipping it over onto a plate was a natural way to show the pretty fruit and let it run into the cake as well.

The idea of the pineapple soon after 1911 when one of James Dole's engineer had invented a machine to cut his pineapples into nice rings. Soon the convenient and pretty rings were used in this age old technique of the skillet cake. The invention of the maraschino cherry added the necessary color needed to make this cake stunning.

The first recorded recipe for Pineapple Upside Down Cake According to John Mariani's ( The Dictionary of American Food and Drink , Revised Edition, 1994), "The first mention in print of such a cake was in 1930, and was so listed in the 1936 Sears Roebuck catalog, but the cake is somewhat older." In Fashionable Food: Seven Decades of Food Fads (1995), Sylvia Lovegren traces pineapple upside-down cake to a 1924 Seattle fund-raising cookbook...While rooting around in old women's magazines I found a Gold Medal Flour ad with a full-page, four-color picture of Pineapple Upside-Down Cake--a round cake with six slices of pineapple, candied red cherries, and a brown sugar glaze. The date: November 1925." --- American Century Cookbook: The Most Popular Recipes of the 20th Century , Jean Anderson (p. 432)