Shish k"ofte turned into pizza

[Laurence Horn]

Lynne's story below about the Connecticut invention is gospel here in New
Haven.  Specifically, Frank Pepe's on Wooster Street (founded in the 1930s)
is reputed to be the first pizza establishment in the world, dating back to
when he arrived from Campania (the Neapolitan region) and developed the
idea of dinner pizza from what had been a snack food back home.  I can't
vouch for that chronology (and of course having lived here for 20 years I
can't dismiss it either), but I can vouch for the fact that by early 1964
chronology there were pizzerias in Naples and Rome (two years after Rudy's
visit) whose pizzas were more like the kind dInIs describes (thick crust,
unlike the thin carbonized style for which Pepe's and other New Haven style
apizza emporia are celebrated, with simple toppings of olive oil, tomatoes,
anchovies, and sliced hard boiled eggs) that they were like American pizzas.

larry

P.S.  The story about the Italianate snack pizza, quite likely apocryphal,
that I've heard involves some poor country lad baking up some dough and
then going from place to place begging for food--i.e. the toppings.  I
suppose if things had worked out differently, he might have invented the
burrito or the d"oner kebap.




dInIs writes:
>Lynne,
>
>The key words are "as we know it." My grandmother-in-law brought the recipe
>for pizza with her from Sicily at the turn of the century (long before Rudy
>looked for it). (20th, not 21st). It was, admittedly, more "bread-like" and
>had very simple toppings (olive oil, garlic, tomato sauce), but it was
>unmistakably pizza. (She never lived in CN.)
>
>Although genrrally a monogenetics person on most linguistic facts, on this
>foodways matter my guess is that many local modifications of various
>Italian homeland recipies were seen as the "original" once they were passed
>around (and modified) in the US.
>
>dInIs
>
>>Rudy Troike wondered:
>>>         I wonder, from the testimony of various contributors, how recent
>>> gyros may be in Greece itself. I have long wondered whether pizza, like
>>> fortune cookies, might be an American invention. On my first visit to
>>> southern Italy in 1962, I couldn't find it, and on a later visit to
>>> northern Italy in 1973, the only place I found pizza was at a tourist
>>> restaurant, where it was cooked with a very thick, hard crust, and had a
>>> raw egg added on top after cooking.
>>
>>When I was a kid, I learned that pizza (as we know it) was invented in
>>Connecticut.  I have no idea about any of the details, but that was the
>>story that was passed around my schoolyard.
>>
>>Lynne
>