A Harte Appetite: Upside-down cakes come in many varieties

"Sweet little upside-down cake ... your top is on your bottom," recites the reluctant dragon in the Disney film of the same name. "Alas little upside-down cake," he continues, "your bottom's on your top."

As the Oxford Companion to Food notes, "Generally, the concept of upsidedownness has had only limited applications in the kitchen," but the dragon's ode reminds us that when it comes to cake, topsy-turvy cooking can be delicious.

True to its name, an upside-down cake is one that is baked on a layer of fruit and then turned upside down for serving so that the fruit is on the top. If you're like most people, when you think of upside-down cake, you think of the iconic pineapple variety.

But the truth is pineapple upside-down cake is a relative newcomer, a 20th-century application of a technique that may go back as far as the Middle Ages. In fact, the term "upside-down cake" itself did not come into vogue until the 19th century. Before that upside-down cakes were referred to as skillet cakes because before the advent of reliable ovens that's what they were cooked in -- on top of the stove. (A skillet, by the way, is still an ideal vessel if for no other reason than that the handle makes it that much easier to flip the cake over when it's done.)

In any case, if you look at early recipes for upside-down cake you'll find that none of them specify pineapple. Instead they call for seasonal fruits like cherries, apples or even prunes. Though I wouldn't turn my nose up at pineapple upside-down cake, there are lots of other approaches that strike me as far more tantalizing.

Consider, for example, chocolate fudge upside-down cake or blueberry upside-down cake or mango upside-down cake, not to mention rhubarb upside-down cake or peach upside-down cake. Probably my favorite is the pumpkin upside-down cake with cranberries and pecans I make every Christmas.

So given the fact that there are so many takes on the upside-down cake, how did the pineapple kind come to be the quintessential version?

The answer is clever marketing.

Though the pineapple has been growing in the New World for centuries, the canned variety is a modern development, perfected by James Dole in 1903. He needed a way to promote his precisely cut canned pineapple rings and an upside-down cake recipe was the ideal way to do it. As a result of his aggressive PR, by the 1940s nearly half of upside-down cake recipes mentioned pineapple in their title and even those that didn't still called for it. Ever since, when Americans see a can of sliced pineapple they are apt to think, "Bottoms up."

Tomato Upside-Down Cake

Botanically the tomato is a fruit, and thus it works as well as any other in an upside-down cake, especially this spicy one adapted from Joanne Weir's marvelous book "You Say Tomato."

1 1/2 sticks butter, divided

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 teaspoons grated ginger

7-8 tomato slices

1 and 1/2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

pinch of salt

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground mace

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup molasses

2 eggs, separated

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup milk

Melt together 1/2 stick butter, brown sugar and ginger and pour on bottom of a greased deep 9-inch cake pan. Cover with a single layer of tomato slices. Sift together flour, baking powder, salt and spices. Cream remaining stick butter and sugar. Add molasses, then egg yolks. Add vanilla and mix well. Add milk alternately with dry ingredients, beating well after each addition. Beat egg whites until stiff and fold into batter. Spread over tomatoes and bake at 350 degrees until cake tests done, about 45 minutes. Cool cake in pan for 15 minutes. Run knife around edges of pan, invert cake onto serving platter, and let sit in pan for 5 minutes. Remove pan and serve.

Tom Harte's book, "Stirring Words," is available at local bookstores. A Harte Appetite airs Fridays 8:49 a.m. on KRCU, 90.9 FM. Contact Tom at semissourian.com or at the Southeast Missourian, P.O. Box 699, Cape Girardeau, Mo., 63702-0699.