Wine glass with burnished gilt border and flower sprays, used for toasting, with replica toasting biscuits By the later 1700s, pineapples had become emblematic of welcome, hospitality, and friendship and were served at elegant dinners. Confectioners made pineapple-flavoured tarts, flummeries, jellies, and ices, often in the shape of the fruit. They also baked small ‘toasting biscuits’ decorated with pineapples, for dipping into glasses of sweet fortified wine when toasts were made during dessert. These replica pineapple toasting biscuits were made by Ivan Day, pressed from late eighteenth-century wooden moulds.

England, c.1765

Lead glass, gilt

D.H. Beves Bequest (C.182-1961)