![]() ![]() None of this did anything to endear the tomato to the people of Europe. (A similar thing happened with potatoes, with this tuber not becoming widely popular until some clever tricks and antics used by Frenchman Antoine-Augustine Parmentier in which he managed to convince the masses that potatoes were just fine to eat.) Europeans new to the tomato found its texture questionable to say the least, and thought they looked rotten when ripened. The tomato did not receive a warm welcome in its new home rather, it was greeted with disdain and outright fear – rumors even circulated that tomatoes were poisonous. You can read more on this here: The History of Cheese.īy the early 1500s, tomatoes had made their way over from the New World to Europe. Cheese, of course, is nothing new, having been around for many thousands of years, with the process of making it probably discovered by accident when someone tried storing milk in a container made from a sheep’s stomach or the like. Needless to say, using bread as a plate for food, naturally gave rise to pizza, with the word “pizza” even thought by some etymologists to ultimately derive from Medieval Greek “pitta,” meaning “cake” or “pie”. Bread was used to serve as not only the plate for food, but also as napkins when you were finished, as only the wealthy could afford to own actual tableware and utensils. We’ll now take a brief look at the stories behind the individual ingredients of modern pizza, as this gives us additional insight into the history of the finished product, and how and why pizza evolved the way it did. One recipe specifically calls for chicken, garlic, cheese, pepper and oil placed on flat bread, which is about as close as you can get to a modern pizza without the now traditional tomato sauce (tomatoes, of course at this point in history were only found in the Americas). ![]() It also contains several recipes that instruct the cook to put various ingredients on a flat bread base. Or, you know, it could have just been that his life was in disarray and he was depressed… Whatever the case, his cook book provides a wealth of information on what cuisine was popular and how it was prepared in first century Rome. Legend has it his love of food was so great that when his finances started to dwindle, he committed suicide rather than risk facing dying of hunger. ![]() One has to wonder if they also delivered.Īs to specific early pizza recipes around this time, we are lucky enough to have the cookbook of Marcus Gavius Apicius, who was more or less the Gordon Ramsay of his time. Shops were also found in Pompeii that contained equipment and tools that would be consistent with those used in pizzerias. Why is this important when talking about the history of pizza? Archeologists excavating the site have uncovered flat cakes made of flour that were a popular staple of the diet of the inhabitants in Pompeii and nearby Neopolis, a Greek settlement that later became Naples. Mount Vesuvius leveled Pompeii on August 24, 79 A.D. Since those early references are obscure at best, we’ll go with that and talk more about modern pizza. However, many argue that these ancient forms of “pizza” aren’t truly pizza as we think of it. Further, it is very likely that people have been putting various toppings like cheese on bread since as long as there has been cheese and bread. The soldiers would then cover the bread with things like cheese and dates for a quick meal. If you choose to loosely define pizza as flat bread with toppings strewn on it, there is evidence that the Persian army around the 5th and 6th centuries used their shields to cook flat bread in this way out in the field. For such a popular food, its origins are difficult to pinpoint, as it all depends on your definition of what pizza is. the world over, practically consider it one of the basic food groups. Pizza has become such a staple of the modern diet that certain people, often found in Computer Science labs at 2 a.m.
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