What if we told you pizza started as food for poor people? What if we told you pizza originated in Iran and not Italy?
Modern pizza is flat-bread covered in tomato sauce, cheese, and a variety of toppings. While flat-bread was the oldest existing component of these four elements (starting with the ancient Egyptians), the pizza’s earliest ancestor was a kind of flat-bread topped with dates and cheese. It was prepared by Persian soldiers of Darius the Great, in 500 B.C, but without the use of an oven.
Many still refuse to believe that the pizza could have been born in Iran, so let’s bring in the Italian (or Greek) connection for them. Naples is said to be the birth place of pizza in the Italian peninsula, but in the 1st Century B.C it was in Greek settlement called Neopolis, first pizza was born in round shapes and topped them with a variety of ingredients like meat, potatoes, olives and dry fruits.
Naples grew into a major trading post and become home to an enormous working class population who couldn’t afford a decent meal three times a day. That’s when roadside vendors and informal restaurants started selling pizza as flat-breads with various toppings. This was looked downed upon by the rich minority.
After the 16th century, tomatoes were introduced in Europe from Peru. However, tomato sauce was not made a part of the pizza anatomy until much later, as the exotic fruit was considered poisonous. In the 17th century, Antony Latini recorded the first ever recipe of tomato sauce (not ketchup!) in a cookbook
Did you know very popular Margherita pizza is named after a Queen?
In mid 19th century Raffaele Esposito introduced sauce on pizza, as cheese baked on flat-bread just wasn’t good enough. It became an instant hit in Naples and he was asked to prepare pizzas for the newly unified Italy’s King Umberto I and Queen Margherita in 1889. The queen loved a combination that coincidentally also reflected the three colours of the Italian flag. It was named after her and that is why a pizza consisting of tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and garnished with basil leaves is known as a Margherita.
Pizza Hut started in 1958 when brothers Dan and Frank Carney convinced their parents to give them a loan. They called it Pizza Hut partly because the sign they brought did not have space for more letters! Pizza Hut made a pizza delivery to International Space Station in 2001 and paid $1 million to transport the pizza.
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