WW2 pizza

[dqa]

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mpizza.html

Pizza's popularity certainly mushroomed (sorry) in the 1950s. However, I've heard that this can be traced back to many soldiers in World War II being exposed to it in the Little Italies of the east coast while waiting to embark for Europe.

[C K Dexter Haven]

Apologia: Since I wasn't asked to track the spread of pizza parlours in the 1950s, I confined the Staff Report pretty much to the topic at hand. This is one of those questions that can lead to endless and fascinating side-topics -- the history of the tomato alone is pretty amazing. It's often hard in writing Staff Reports to know where to draw the line, but I chose to focus on historical origins (as the question implied) rather than the popularity.

[Duck Duck Goose]

...and the way I heard it was, American GIs stationed in Naples during WWII learned about pizza over there and came back with a raging hunger for it.

[bibliophage]

Anecdote: My father first tasted pizza in 1943 in Endicott, New York (near Binghamton). He was not the sort of person to try new and exciting foods, so I'm guessing it was pretty well established by that time. He didn't like it, because it was too spicy. My mother also disliked it for the same reson the first time she tried it, in Boston in the early 1950s. Later they both loved it. I always wondered if modern pizza is less spicy that the stuff they tried, or if they just got used to it over time.

[deepstblu]

Joe's Tomato Pie in Trenton, New Jersey closed a year or so ago after being in business since 1910, so pizza was known in the US before WWI let alone WWII, although it probably wasn't a mass market item. (In some places "tomato pie" and "pizza" are used interchangeably; in Trenton there seems to be the subtle distinction that a when making a tomato pie, the cheese goes onto the crust and is then topped with sauce, while a pizza has cheese on top of the sauce.)

[Healym]

Dex-

I don't know of any domestic producers of water buffalo mozzarella, but imported varieties can be found right here in Chicago (Treasure Island, for one place) and it is absoluetely WONDERFUL on pizza (at least a neapolitan style pizza). It's not cheap, which is the one limiting factor which keeps me from using it exclusively, but it melts like a dream and has an exquisite nutty flavor and a slight sweetness. Generally I use the fresh mozzarella made from cow's milk, which is much cheaper (but still more expensive than the packaged stuff). Well worth trying. It tends to be VERY stringy though, which some folks might not like. Also, it's very moist, so you might want to press out the water as best you can to avoid having a soggy pizza (a thicker sauce might help in this regard as well. I wouldn't recommend it for making pan pizza or Chicago Style pizza though.

[Lute Skywatcher]

A local DJ once used the first US appearance of pizza as a trivia question. The answer was around 1880. I wasn't satisfied with this, so I called him for clarification. The reason he gave was that his grandparents had been eating pizza in NYC in 1900.

[samclem]

There are two known and accredited outposts of first-class pizza outside the city, Joe's Tomato Pie Restaurant of Trenton, New Jersey, and Johnny's of Mt. Vernon, New York. However, the real cognoscenti will attest that within the city limits, and in this writer's opinion, the only places that qualify are Patsy's of East Harlem, John's of Bleecker Street, and Totonno's of Coney Island. Interestingly, all three of these establishments can trace their ancestry to Gennaro Lombardi, who, in the back of his Neapolitan grocery store on Spring Street on the Lower East Side, made a round pie in his large brick, coal-fired oven as early as 1905.

from here

Of course, all restaraunts and businesses trace there history back eons before they can prove anything.

Just added as a quick Google search.


(edited to fix link)


[Edited by Arnold Winkelried on 04-12-2001 at 09:16 PM]

[Estilicon]

So pizza as we know it was "invented" in america in 1950 and then exported worldwide. As an argentinian (43% population descendant of italians) the only thing I can say is please. Pizza was brought to this country by the italians inmigrants just as in your's. I checked with my grandmother and she told me that the first time she ate pizza it was already popular.
I can agree that you exported it to countries where no italian community existed.

[C K Dexter Haven]

Hey, there were hamburgers in Argentina way back when, too. But McDonald's popularized them. (Though why anyone would want hamburger when Argentine steak is available is beyond me.)

In the same way, as I thought I said in the Staff Report, "American pizza" was popularized in the 1950s and after throughout the world. "American pizza" is different from Neapolitan pizza, or Argentine pizza. (I did have a pizza in Buenos Aires, with hard boiled egg among other condiments; it was delicious, but it was neither American pizza nor Italian pizza.)

I think there's a major definitional problem with what is meant by "pizza", as I tried to outline in the Report. Some Mexicans claim that the nacho-and-guacamole-and-cheese is the origin of pizza. The Report mentions French and Middle Eastern versions. There are others.

I chose to define pizza in a certain way, and traced the origin to Italy, and specifically to Naples.

I further mentioned (but did not define) "American pizza" which is now (thanks to Pizza Hut et al) found practically everywhere in the world. In no way was that meant to distract from the Italian invention (and spreading) of pizza. Reread the report, please. Note the dripping sarcasm inherent in words like "one might".

[yumitori]

Originally posted by C K Dexter Haven

I chose to define pizza in a certain way, and traced the origin to Italy, and specifically to Naples.

I further mentioned (but did not define) "American pizza" which is now (thanks to Pizza Hut et al) found practically everywhere in the world. In no way was that meant to distract from the Italian invention (and spreading) of pizza. Reread the report, please. Note the dripping sarcasm inherent in words like "one might".

For what it's worth, I thought the report was just fine. In fact, I was quite pleased to see that you did not fall into the trap of repeating many of the fallacies or exaggerations commonly seen in stories about the early history of tomato consumption in Europe.

[gjdodger]

oh, I thought I'd just bore you all with comments I made on the subject last fall. Ain't the internet wonderful?

http://www.garyfarm.com/column/103000pizza.htm