So there are a couple of
writeups here claiming that pizza is not an
Italian dish, but rather an
Italian-American one. Whilst it is
undoubtedly true that the thick-
base,
chewy pizza, laden with
toppings
and dripping with
grease originated in
America, the origins of the dish
are very
ancient indeed.
Pizza is ultimately a bread-based dish, of course. It's known that humans
have been grinding up grass seeds, mixing the resulting powder with water
and baking dough for many millennia. The obvious step onwards from eating
plain dry bread is to add other foodstuffs to it, either before, during or
after the baking process. Recipes from Naples from around 1000 AD
detail how to make a flat bread topped with herbs and lard cheese.
However
the characteristic additional foodstuffs on a modern pizza are, of course,
tomatoes and cheese. Tomatoes were introduced to Europe by the Spanish
returning from their conquests in South America in the 15th Century. At
first they were grown as ornamental plants, but by the end of the
17th Century tomatoes were a recognised food in Europe. By 1839 the
first written recipes for tomato sauce had appeared in Italy and this
was probably being spread on top of bread by 1850.
In 1889 King Umberto I and his wife, Queen Margherita went to their
traditional summer palace in Capo di Monte. Hearing of a local dish
called pizza they asked to try it, and the most famous pizza chef in Naples,
don Raffaele, was called in to prepare this for them. He decided to create a
new pizza in their honour, on which he put tomatoes, mozzarella cheese and
basil, so that the red, white and green would reflect the colours of
the Italian flag. The pizza was a resounding success and don Raffaele
named it "pizza Margherita" in honour of the queen. This is also usually
considered the turning point from where pizza ceased to be a food fit only
for peasants and the lower classes.