Pizza (pronounced peet-suh)
A flat, open-faced baked pie of Italian origin,
consisting of a thin layer of bread dough topped with spiced tomato sauce and
cheese, often garnished with anchovies, sausage slices, mushrooms etc and baked
in a very hot oven; also called pizza pie.
Pre 1000: From the Modern Neapolitan Italian pizza (a variant of pitta (a flat bread)), the origin of which is uncertain. Although unattested, it may be related to the
Vulgar Latin picea, from the
Classical Latin piceus (relating to
pitch). An alternative, and more likely,
etymology traces it back to the Byzantine Greek πίτα (pita) (cake, pie) which exists in Modern Greek as pitta (cake), the ultimate root being
the Ancient Greek pḗtea (bran) and pētítēs
(bran; bread). More speculative is the
suggested link with the Langobardic (an ancient German language in northern
Italy), from a Germanic source akin to the Old High German pizzo or bizzo (mouthful;
morsel; bite) from the proto-Germanic biton
(bit).
The first documented use of the word pizza
appears to have been AD 997 in Gaeta and then later in different parts of
Central and Southern Italy although it’s unclear whether it refers to something
which would now be called a pizza. The
official Italian view remains that published in 1907 in the two volume Vocabolario Etimologico della Lingua
Italiana (Etymological Vocabulary of the Italian language) that the origin
lies in the dialectal pinza (clamp)
from the Latin pinsere (to pound or
stamp). The word appears not to have
entered general use in English use until the early 1800s although it was known,
English linguist, poet & lexicographer John Florio (1552-1625; aka Giovanni
Florio) included an entry in his Italian-English Dictionary (A Worlde of Wordes, or Dictionarie of the
Italian and English tongues (1598)) defining pizza as “a small cake or
wafer”.
The concept of
a flat piece of bread dough, covered with savory toppings, is so obviously a
convenient and economical way of preparing a meal using pre-modern technology
that pizza-like dishes were probably included in the meals of many cultures,
the cooking method doubtless quite ancient.
From Greek and Roman records it’s apparent it was known in antiquity a
doubtless pre-dates even those civilizations, the Armenians famously having
staked a claim to its invention but as part of modernity, it’s long been
regarded as one of Italy’s many gifts to the world. Within Italy, it’s the Neapolitans who most
regard it as their own and some are quite proprietorial, appalled by some of
the variations (especially those favored by English-speaking barbarians) which
appear around the planet, the most infamous probably the ham and pineapple
pizza, apparently a Canadian innovation from 1962. The Neapolitans have allies in their battle
for culinary hygiene, Iceland's president, Guðni Jóhannesson (b 1968, President
of Iceland since 2016) in 2017 saying he’d like to ban pineapple on pizza. He later confirmed to do so wasn’t within the
constitutional authority of his office and admitted it wasn’t a desirable power
of a head of state to possess. Thinking
it an abomination, the Neapolitans are probably more dictatorial and would ban
it if they could, insisting that all may appear atop a pizza base is:
Plum tomatoes
Tomato puree (optional)
A sprinkling of table or sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Fresh Mozzarella balls
Parmesan cheese
A drizzle of Olive Oil
A hand-full of fresh basil leaves
The pizzeria (shop where pizzas are made, sold, or eaten) seems to have been a US coining, noted from 1928 in New York City, the number of restaurant using the name proliferating quickly there before spreading in the US and beyond. In the 1920s and 1930s, “pizzeria” was used also to describe the dish itself. The shortened for “za” was US student slang for pizza, two syllables just too much for the hippies of the time.
Pizzagate was a conspiracy theory that circulated during the 2016 US presidential campaign, sparked by WikiLeaks publishing a tranche of emails from within the Democrat Party machine. According to some, encoded in the text of the emails was a series of messages between highly-placed members of the party who were involved in a pedophile ring, even detailing crooked Hillary Clinton’s part in the ritualistic sexual abuse of children in the basement of a certain pizzeria in Washington DC. The named pizzeria didn’t actually have a basement but the story for a while caused a stir, later integrated (though with less specificity) into the cultural phenomenon which would next year emerge as QAnon. QAnon may have started as satire in the wake of pizzagate, an absurdist parody of conspiracy theories with claims only simpletons would take seriously but it turned out there were a lot of them about and QAnon soon gained critical mass, assuming a life of its own. What its rapid traction did suggest was those asserting something unbelievably evil or bizarre need only to claim crooked Hillary Clinton is in some way involved to make it sound creditable. Had it not been for the perception of crooked Hillary's crooked crookedness, the whole QAnon thing may never have become a thing.
The Italians (who should know), maintain the correct way to eat pizza is with a knife & fork, starting at the triangular tip and working towards the crust. Only when what remains is a small remanent of crust, resistant to the prod of the fork, is it thought good form to pick it up with the fingers. Folding, a popular recommendation among those concerned with cheese-loss, is also frowned upon. In Italian a folded slice of pizza is known as a calzone (literally “stocking; trouser”) and even those should be eaten with knife & fork.
Pizza
etiquette is an inexact science but in the West there are few prepared to argue the correct
technique is anything but some variation on holding it at the crust-end and
eating from the tip although there are some bases so thin and floppy they defy
any method short of being rolled into a sushi-like cylinder; for these it’s
whatever works. Generally though, hold
the pizza by the crust and begin. If
it’s a thin base and droops towards the tip, lift it higher and lower the tip
to the mouth; as the width of what’s left increases, structural integrity will
improve and by at least half-way through, it’ll be rigid enough to be eaten
horizontally. Using the thumb, index and
middle finger, the slice can slightly be curved (the edges raised) to prevent
cheese or other topping sliding off. In
New York City, locals often insist this is called the “New York fold” but,
having claimed authorship of the Martini (disputed) and the club sandwich
(probably true), many assume if it’s in NYC, they own it.
Advertising agency BBDO's concept paper (3 August 1995) for Pizza Hut’s Stuffed Crust campaign (Donald & Ivana Trump).
Proving that Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) will do just about anything for the money, in 1995 he and then wife (#1) Ivana (née Zelníčková; b 1949) starred in a commercial for Pizza Hut’s new “Stuffed Crust” pizza, encouraging consumers to eat the things “crust first”. He knew it was wrong but did it anyway.
Recommended pizza toppings
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