Pizza as we know it was invented in America, NOT Italy, explains the Italian professor of food history
- Professor Alberto Grandi said pizza was made in the US by Italian immigrants
- He said the prototype was a “poorly cooked” focaccia bread eaten for dessert
Pizza as we know it wasn’t invented in Italy, but in America, according to an Italian professor of food history.
Professor Alberto Grandi, from the University of Parma, Italy, said it was the US that owes the world to making pizza what it is today, as Italian immigrants took advantage of newly found ingredients to improve it.
Although a form of it came from Italy, it was nothing like the pizza we know today, says Professor Grandi.
Instead of a cheese with tomato and mozzarella on a savory pastry base, it was instead ‘poorly cooked’ sweet focaccia bread with no toppings eaten for dessert.
He said many Italian immigrants then returned to their home countries, taking the newly developed pizza with them.
Professor Alberto Grandi, from the University of Parma, Italy, said it was the US that the world owes for making pizza what it is today
As part of the famous ‘Italian diaspora’, 13 million Italians emigrated to America between 1880 and 1920. However, many returned in subsequent years.
Professor Grandi said: ‘Migration allows Italians to get to know new ingredients. I’m just saying that pizza is delicious, but the story is a little different from what is often told.’
He also said that Pellegrino Artusi’s book on food – written in 1891 – was “the first kind of bible of Italian food.”
The book, La Scienza in Cucina e l’Arte di Mangiar Bene (Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well), has sold millions of copies and is still revered in Italian cuisine.
Professor Grandi said it became an “important reference for Italians in America,” helping them “preserve their language” and allowing them to “adopt a style of cooking that doesn’t really exist in Italy” with new ingredients and methods.
He added, “And then they take the whole thing back to Italy. This is what happens with pizza.
In Artusi’s book, Neapolitan pizza is a dessert that bears no resemblance to what we recognize as Neapolitan pizza. It’s actually a sweet focaccia.
‘The Neapolitan pizza was a very bad product and free of spices, it was very simple and then also badly cooked because the ovens are bad.
And yet somehow it becomes this rich specialty with tomato sauce and all the other toppings. It will be this in America and then come back.”
Professor Grandi said there is a “recognized theory” called the “Pizza Effect” that explains the phenomenon.
He said: ‘It explains how a product can be born in one place, then transformed as a result of migration and then returned to its place of origin completely transformed.
“The most egregious example is pasta. Pasta had been famous in Naples since the 1600s.
‘The Neapolitans have been called ‘mangiamaccheroni’ (macaroni eaters) since the 1600s, but the rest of Italy has no pasta.
‘Many Italians first ate pasta in the US. They discovered it in America and then many come back.’
Professor Grandi said the same thing happened when Indian migrants brought samosas to America and then returned to their homeland with samosas that looked and tasted “completely different”.