Samuel Morse – inventor of the telegraph was not keen on on Neapolitan pizza (1831)
A species of the most nauseating cake … covered over with slices of pomodoro or tomatoes, and sprinkled with little fish and black pepper and I know not what other ingredients, it altogether looks like a piece of bread that has been taken reeking out of the sewer.
it used to be said that England’s national dish – rather than roast beef and yorkshire pudding, or fish and chips – had become chicken tikka masala. I’m not so sure that’s true any more (if it ever was) and pizza is at least running neck and neck with the curry.
Here in Battersea, or indeed any other part of London, or any other city, pizza restaurants – eat in, take-away or delivering – are ubiquitous. The first time I ever heard pizza mentioned was in the fifties, in a song by Dean Martin called That’s Amore. And for many years afterwards I didn’t realise that fact. I thought the first lines were:
When the moon hits your eye like a big piece of pie
That’s amore
When in fact what I was hearing was:
When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie
That’s amore
When the world seems to shine like you’ve had too much wine
That’s amore
The hit song first appeared in the 1953 movie The Caddy, starring Dean Martin and his comedy sidekick Jerry Lewis. Apparently the movie script left Martin little to do which strained the partnership a bit. Lewis asked songwriter Harry Warren to write a song for Martin to sing in the movie. Jack Brooks wrote the lyrics.
Cheese on toast was the nearest I ever came to anything resembling pizza until the late 1960s when Angela and I were staying in North Wales with her Auntie Margaret who used to produce her own pan-friend version for her children. With the dough topped by plenty of grated cheese and tinned tomatoes and some bacon it might not have been authentic but it was cheap, delicious and filling and we often produced it for our own kids when they (and we) were young.
Angela had actually experienced traditional pizza in America earlier in the sixties, and recalls watching the dough being tossed from hand to hand before cooking, and the customers in the diner sitting at long communal tables. Fast forward to the early 1980s her boss took her for lunch in central Manchester where she tasted pizza once more. Later on we both went later on to same restaurant and I finally ceased to be a pizza virgin. I remember it as being much smaller, crisper and thinner than (say) the modern Domino’s offering and with less topping.
Pizza has been around for a very long time. Pieces of flatbread, topped with savouries, served as a simple and tasty meal for those who could not afford plates, or who were on the go. These primitive pizzas appear in Virgil’s Aeneid where Aeneas and his crew sit down beneath a tree and lay out ‘thin wheaten cakes as platters for their meal’. They then scattered them with mushrooms and herbs they had found in the woods and ate them crust and and all. A first century fresco recently discovered during new excavations in Pompeii certainly resembles a pizza.
Anyway, suffice it to say that people from many lands have been eating some kind of flatbreads topped by some kind of meat or vegetable since the ancient times but to trace the history of modern pizza we need to travel to Naples in the late eighteenth century. The increasingly affluent city was a magnet when the population was swollen by peasants flooding to pick up whatever work they could. Usually paid a pittance they needed food that was cheap and easy to eat . Pizzas sold by street vendors met this need, with two sous buying a pizza large enough for a family.
They may have been more like flatbreads than the pizza we know today, and the simplest (and cheapest) were probably topped with little more than garlic and salt. Moving up a notch others might include caciocavallo (a cheese made from horse’s milk), cecenielli (whitebait) or basil. And tomatoes started to make an appearance. These had recently been introduced from the Americas and were something of a curiosity and regarded with suspicion. But that unpopularity kept the price low – and sales went up accordingly.
Though popular, pizza’s acceptance as cuisine had to wait another century. In 1889, tavern owner and pizza maker Raffaele Esposito was asked to make pizzas for King Umberto I of Italy and his wife, Queen Margherita of Savoy. The legend says that Esposito made a selection, including one with tomatoes, mozzarella and basil that won royal approval. Foudation myth or hard fact? Who knows, but the Margherita had been born and pizza began its climb towards world domination.
America became pizza’s second home. Italian emigrants had already reached the East Coast by the end of the 10th century and in 1905, the first pizzeria – Lombardi’s – was opened in New York City. The humble street food became an American institution.
It took a bit longer to reach these shores and the first mention of pizza in London is probably in The Tatler in July 1952. In an article taking a rather mocking tone about Italian food in Soho restaurants we find this:
If you want to get away from altogether messy dishes – and let us confess, most of them are – keep an eye open for… pizza, a baked sandwich in many varieties, sweet and otherwise.
Anyway, a year later, pizza had become a bit more than a baked sandwich and was moving in more elevated circles. It gets a mention in The Tatler’s society pages where, at a gathering of diplomats and minor royalty, “the hostess provided delicious Italian pizza” at “an informal supper party.”
Nearly twenty years ago while on a visit to Naples with friends we ventured into a side street cafe and were handed badly typed menus. The pizzas seemed incredibly cheap us and we ordered with alacrity. Hardly a minute had passed when the waiter returned and without explanation thrust different menus into our hands.
These were rather posher than the first – laminated and with English translations. And the price of pizza had risen considerably. We’d clearly been originally given the locals’ menu by mistake, and were now paying the price for being tourists. And why not? The pizzas were OK but not exactly stunningly delicious – just a smear of tomato paste and a bit of cheese heavily seasoned with dried herbs. A reminder of the cheap food for hungry Neapolitan casual labourers which began pizza’s journey to becoming arguably the world’s favourite fast food.
[Not so fun fact: Some three billion pizzas are sold each year in the USA alone, an average of 46 slices per person (including US Presidents perhaps).
