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Rating: This is the first major book I see on the history of pizza, important for the publisher that published it (I have another one, from a publisher that publishes books at low prices), and to buy it, after having 'skimmed through' it (consulted it), I 'forced' myself to do it; but rightly so: after reading it, I review it, having appreciated it (and decided to propose it to you).
Written by a Food History scholar, who collaborates with magazines and newspapers, with simple and clear language, it is an exciting book, suitable for everyone, not just food enthusiasts, experts, or hospitality school students.
While reading it, I was amazed by America's role in the development of pizza and its spread around the world: until now I didn't know that, for example, the topping of tomato sauce and mozzarella, even though it was born in Naples, became a staple thanks to our emigrants there who, between the 1800s and 1900s, among the Italian products they consumed the most were those mentioned, first imported and then, due to the ever-increasing demand for these, produced locally.
In this review, I will limit myself to presenting only the information of potential common interest, leaving you the desire to know more, by buying the book.
Pizza was born as a standalone food in the bread category among the popular classes in Naples between the 1600s and 1700s (and also the profession of the pizzaiolo and the first form of pizzeria), and in the 1800s the first testimonies, from Italian and foreign travelers visiting the city, were almost only negative: like the opinion of Samuel Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, for whom pizza resembled 'a piece of bread pulled out of the sewer'.
In 1889 the creation of the Margherita Pizza by Raffaele Esposito, a pizzaiolo, for Queen Margherita during an official visit to Naples, but the event, the author writes, has never been confirmed by any source.
Its spread in Italy and the world initially was slow (it's said that Pietro Mascagni – a famous lyric music composer with works like 'Cavalleria rusticana', editor's note – in New York for concerts had difficulty finding pizza among Italians), exploding only after the Second World War (in America many pizzerias had been opened thanks to the creation of the gas oven by Ira Nevin, an engineer, in the '30s).
As a recipe, it had more luck, having already appeared in manuals and chronicles between the 1500s and 1700s, although not with its name, while with its true name for the first time in a manual of the second half of the 1800s, in three versions without tomato.
Important contributions in this field in the 1900s from two authors (Alberto Cougnet, a food and wine journalist, and Amedeo Pettini, a renowned chef of the royal house of Savoy – that of the previously named queen, editor's note) today little known, in two works.
And here returns the period of the development of the pizza's base topping, which after being 'brought back' to Italy in the place where it was born, became successful throughout Italy and became the base for many toppings.
While America brought pizza worldwide, along with two of its other products, the hamburger and the hot dog (but their starting ingredient, meat, was brought to America by German immigrants), the world considers pizza Italian.
But reaching various peoples, pizza toppings became enriched with local products: one of the examples in the book is the pizza hated by many of us Italians, the 'ham (cooked) and pineapple', the 'Hawaiian Pizza', created in the '50s by a Canadian of Greek origin (another book on pizza that I still have reports 1962 as the year and who created it a full Greek). One can add as examples two types of pan pizza created in Chicago: the 'deep-dish pizza' and the 'stuffed pizza' ('pizza in a deep dish' and 'stuffed pizza' in Italian, editor's note).
And still a dish very present in American films (the first in cinema history is 'Saturday Night Fever' with John Travolta and among all those mentioned 'Nightmare 4 – The Dream Master' – with Robert Englund, editor's note – and, on takeout pizza, 'Home Alone' – with Macaulay Culkin, as Kevin, a child left at home by mistake by the family that leaves for Christmas holidays in Paris, who loves cheese pizza, editor's note), rarely in Italian ones (only four: the first in history is 'San Giovanni decollato', one of the first with Totò, and three famous ones – 'L'oro di Napoli', with Sofia Loren, 'La dolce vita', by Federico Fellini, and 'Dramma della gelosia', with Marcello Mastroianni [protagonist of the previously named film, editor's note], Giancarlo Giannini and Monica Vitti).
And in TV series, both TV shows (for example 'Friends', with Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt's ex-girlfriend, editor's note, and 'Gilmore Girls') and cartoons (animated) (for example 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' – I remember that as a kid I had seen pizza at least in the opening credits images – and 'Futurama' – I remember that as a teenager I had seen the first episode where Fry, the delivery boy for 'Panucci's Pizza', in New York on the evening of December 31, 1999, delivers a pizza to a phony customer ['I.C. Weiner'], accidentally falls into a kind of cryogenic booth, remaining frozen for 1000 years, then waking up in a completely technological city).
After reading all this, don't you feel like running to buy the book? And if it were lunchtime for you, also having a pizza?
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