[thechat] Pizza (was: "Eight Miles High")
Erik Mattheis
gozz at gozz.com
Tue Dec 9 16:00:55 CST 2003
I say the best answer is "Italy": a pizza without tomato sauce is not
pizza to be, and tomato sauce originated n Italy:
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mpizza.html
Dear Straight Dope:
Who really invented pizza? The Greeks, Italians, or Mexicans? --Yours
in food, Chris & Blair , Calgary, Alberta, Canada
SDSTAFF Dex replies:
Pizza is one of those foods for which we will never know a specific
origin. For one thing, the definitions of pizza are many and varied.
Putting stuff on flat bread as a meal certainly goes back as far as
ancient Rome. The word "pizza" itself appears just before 1000 AD, in
the area between Naples and Rome, meaning "pie."
There are traditional pizza-like dishes in Provence where bread (or
sometimes a pastry) is topped with onion, tomato, anchovies, and
olives. In the Middle East, lahma bi ajeen is a pizza base with minced
onions, meat, and flavorings.
So we need to start with some definitions. Shall we confine our
attention to American pizza, now found throughout the world? If so, no
problem--it was invented in America in the 1950s. That's probably not
the answer you were looking for, although the New World did make
possible pizza as we know it today.
Instead let's define modern pizza as the tasty conjunction of flat
bread, tomato sauce, and cheese. Most food historians point to Naples
as the area of origin, and to Napoletana , the pizza of Naples, as the
archetype of this type of pizza.
The word "pizza" itself is probably related to pitta (bread) so let's
start with the crust. In ancient times, all bread was basically flat,
and treated as a food in and of itself. The idea of bread as a carrier
or holder of other food pretty much started in the Middle Ages, what we
today might call an open face sandwich. It wasn't originally a new way
of eating--the bread was a sort of place mat, to help keep the table
clean during meals. Only the rich could afford plates, so a flat piece
of (say) hard barley bread on the table was used to hold the meal,
mostly meat and drippings. Bread was specially baked for that purpose.
After the meal, sometimes the bread was consumed, and sometimes given
to the dogs.
The closed sandwich has its origins in the 18th century, but that's a
different story.
Next ingredient: cheese. Cheese itself dates back to prehistoric times
and was probably discovered by accidental fermentation. Mozzarella, a
soft, fresh cheese traditionally made from the milk of water buffalo,
originated in 15th century Naples. Mozzarella nowadays is made from
cow's milk. You can still find buffalo-cheese (or a blend of buffalo
and cow cheese) in Salerno, but it's too expensive and delicate for
pizza topping, we're told.
That brings us to tomato sauce--the New World's contribution to pizza,
since the tomato was a New World plant. Initially Europeans regarded
the tomato with suspicion and fear. It had a strange texture, was too
acidic to eat green, and looked spoiled when ripe. It disintegrated
when cooked, and was even suspected of being poisonous.
But eventually it caught on. New plants from America arrived in Iberia
and spread throughout the Mediterranean. Italy probably got the tomato
shortly after Spain--its soil and climate, similar to that of Central
Mexico, helped the import thrive. The first written mention of the
tomato in Italy is 1544; it was fried and eaten with salt and pepper.
By 1692, we have the first recipe for Italian tomato sauce, with chile
peppers, so the modern pizza was just around the corner.
Alas, we shall never know the genius who first put together the bread,
tomato sauce, and cheese. But that's how pizza (as I've defined it)
came to be.
There are a many types of pizza, of course. Even in Naples, there is no
consensus on what exactly constitutes a Neapolitan pizza. Burton
Anderson writes that the most basic pizza is marinara --flat bread with
oil, tomato, garlic, and oregano. It was stored on voyages so that
sailors ( marinai ) could make pizza away from home. The pizza
Margherita is just over a century old, named after the first queen of
the united Italy, using toppings of tomato, mozzarella cheese, and
fresh basil--the red, white, and green of the Italian flag. We also
have calzone (pizza with an enclosed filling), pizza maniata (kneaded),
pizzette (miniature) and pizza bianca (no toppings).
Italian immigrants brought pizza to the United States, in the early
1900s. However, it was the 1950s when pizza caught on outside the
Italian-American community, and quickly spread throughout the U.S. and
became an international food, now found in every country.
--SDSTAFF Dex
Straight Dope Science Advisory Board
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