Mama Mia! Tomato sauce on pizza is an American creation, not an Italian one, says food historian at the University of Parma – sparking outrage in his home country

Tomato sauce on pizza was invented in America, not Italy, according to an Italian food historian – and veteran pizzaiolos in Rome are outraged by the claim.

Professor Alberto Grandi of the University of Parma, Italy, states that “pizza rossa” – or red pizza, topped with tomato sauce – emerged when Italian immigrants took advantage of newly found ingredients on American soil to improve it.

The food historian details pizza’s alleged origin story in his and Daniele Soffiati’s book, La Cucina Italiana Non Esiste – Italian Cuisine Does Not Exist, which promises to debunk “lies and myths” about Italian cuisine.

According to the authors, not only tomatoes came from the New World, but also tomato sauce, with Italians only discovering tomato sauce in plentiful quantities when they began immigrating to the United States in the 19th century.

As part of the famous ‘Italian diaspora’, thirteen million Italians emigrated to America between 1880 and 1920, but many returned to their homeland in subsequent years.

Until mass emigration, pizza in Italy was served without tomato sauce and consisted of a round piece of plain focaccia topped with various ingredients, the authors say.

“The plant comes from America and that also applies to the use of tomato sauce as a basis for our cuisine,” said Professor Grandi La Repubblica newspaper from 2023.

‘Italians discovered it abroad, thanks to the industrialization of food production. Pizza turned red in America. Before that it was plain focaccia, sometimes decorated with pieces of tomato.’

Not everyone is ready to embrace the bold theory, however, as outraged veteran pizza makers in Rome rally to defend their culinary heritage and dismiss the claims as ‘nonsense’.

Gianni Altrui, 48, knows a thing or two about pizza; he has been making around 300 pizzas a day since he was 20 in the restaurant near Piazza del Popolo in the Italian capital.

Speaking to the TelegraphGianni said of the authors’ claims: ‘That’s nonsense, I don’t believe that’s true. It’s the Americans who learned from the Italians when it comes to food, not the other way around.”

Another pizzaiolo – or pizza maker – agrees with Gianni: at Antica Trattoria Agonale in Piazza Navona, Clariston Alves is also unimpressed by the authors’ claims.

The Brazilian, who has lived in Rome for 30 years, pointed to a pizza being taken out of the wood-burning oven and said: ‘Look, it’s pizza rossa. The Americans may have adapted it, but I don’t think they invented it.’

Professor Alberto Grandi argues that ‘pizza rossa’ – or red pizza – was created when Italian immigrants took advantage of newly found ingredients on American soil to improve pizza

“The plant comes from America and so does the use of tomato sauce as a basis for our cuisine,” Professor Grandi said of Italians who encountered tomatoes in the United States in the 19th century

Pictured: The pizza seller, 1825, by Gaetano Dura (1805-1878), lithograph. According to Professor Grandi, pizza in Italy was made without tomato sauce until the emigration in the 19th century

But the book’s authors have insisted they did thorough research to prove their claim that it was the Americans who started producing tomato sauce on a large scale in the 19th century.

Italian immigrants in the US who opened restaurants and pizzerias began to take advantage of the abundance of tomato sauce, and by World War II there were many more pizzerias in America than in Italy, according to historians.

It’s not the first time that food history professor Grandi has challenged the mythology surrounding Italy’s culinary favorites.

He claims that another of Italy’s most cherished dishes, spaghetti carbonara, was invented during World War II with bacon, cheese and powdered eggs brought by American soldiers.

Meanwhile, Americans have been busy adding their own special twists to pizzas, as they unveil the most bizarre “local pizza styles” in the United States – including the “Altoona pie” with cheese slices from Pennsylvania and the tomato squares from Rhode Island.