The name means pastry of the phoenix pear — fènglí being the Mandarin word for pineapple, sū meaning crisp. In Taiwanese Hokkien, the pineapple is called ông-lâi, which sounds nearly identical to 旺來, meaning prosperity arrives. That phonetic coincidence is not incidental to the pastry’s cultural meaning. Pineapple in Taiwan carries a specific symbolic weight — good fortune, abundance, welcome — and fènglísū has absorbed that symbolism so completely that giving a box of them is understood as an expression of goodwill regardless of the occasion.

The pineapple is not native to Taiwan. It arrived in the 16th century, brought by Portuguese traders who were among the first Europeans to establish contact with the island. Taiwan’s climate proved immediately hospitable — warm, humid, with the volcanic soil of the southern counties providing ideal growing conditions. Cultivation spread through the Qing Dynasty period, and by the 1870s pineapple fields were a documented feature of the southern landscape.

The Japanese colonial period, from 1895 to 1945, transformed pineapple from a local agricultural product into an industrial one. The Japanese colonial administration identified Taiwan’s pineapple industry as strategically valuable and invested heavily in it — processing plants were built, export infrastructure developed, and by the late 1930s Taiwan was producing over 1.6 million cases of canned pineapple annually, making it one of the largest pineapple exporters in the world. The market was primarily Japan and Japanese-controlled Manchuria. When that colonial economy ended in 1945, Taiwan was left with abundant domestic pineapple and no guaranteed export market — a surplus that Taiwanese bakers and food producers turned into an opportunity.

The modern fènglísū took shape in the 1970s, when that surplus drove culinary innovation in southern Taiwan. Pastry makers developed the shortbread shell and pineapple jam filling combination that defines the current form. Traditional recipes often incorporate winter melon alongside pineapple in the filling — extending the fruit, moderating acidity, and adding a fibrous texture that pure pineapple jam lacks. Premium versions use 100% pineapple. Both are sold and both have their advocates, though the all-pineapple version has become the prestige marker.

The Chia Te bakery in Taipei is the name most associated with fenglisu’s rise to national symbol status. Founded in 1975, Chia Te won back-to-back Golden Champion awards at the first Taipei Pineapple Cake Festival in 2006 and 2007, earned government endorsements, and became the shop that visitors to Taipei are directed to first. The lines outside reflect a genuine product rather than manufactured reputation — the shell is precisely calibrated, the filling balanced, the ratio of crust to jam exactly right. Other excellent versions exist across the island. Chia Te established the benchmark.

Today fènglísū travels in ways that most pastries do not. It crosses borders in luggage, arrives as office gifts, appears on international airline menus as a representation of Taiwanese food culture. A pastry built from a Portuguese-introduced fruit, industrialized under Japanese colonial administration, and perfected in a Taipei bakery in the 1970s has become the edible shorthand for Taiwan itself — which is, at minimum, a more interesting origin story than the packaging usually suggests.

• Japanese Colonial Influence
• Portuguese Influence

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Regional Roots

• Taiwan