FW: Calzone, Sausage Pizza (1947)

[Frank Abate]

Barry's details and dates below are instructive, and blow away the claim
(which I never believed anyway) that the first pizzas were made in New
Haven, a local myth in Connecticut.

The spelling is always "calzone" around here.

Re "pizza pie", as a former Midwesterner, I can report that referring to a
pizza as a "pie", common in the NYC-area (and elsewhere?  DARE files?)
struck me as odd when I first heard it.  To me it was never called anything
but "pizza", and "pizza pie" was only known from the lyrics of the Dean
Martin song "That's Amore".  One can also ask for a "slice of pie" in NYC,
which in Ohio/Michigan would mean something with fruit or cream (or
whatever) in it, not pizza, not ever.

Frank Abate

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
Of Bapopik at AOL.COM
Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2001 10:23 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Calzone, Sausage Pizza (1947)


   From the NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE, 25 January 1947, pg. 11, col. 7:

_Pizzas of Cheese and Sausage_
_Baked Brown in Sally's Oven_
----------------------------
_Golden Stuffed Pies Are_
   _Baked to Order in This_
   _East Harlem Hideaway_
   By Clementine Paddleford
   Let's do something different tonight.  And why not?  Don't you get bored
with the smart restaurant-type meal, each just like the other?  Heaven knows
that we do.  Now is the moment to strike out for Sally's at 2217 First
Avenue, between 113th and 114th Streets, location East Harlem, in the heart
of Little Italy.  The pizzas you'll love and ditto for Sally, and ditto for
Sally's wife, Anna.  Quaff the red wine; eat pizza pie.  Stay past your bed
time.  No weariness tomorrow, for you have had fun.  Just for this evening
be a young sprout again.
   Pizza, that's the great thing.  Sally is one of a pizza-making family.
Sally's Dad made the pizzas at the age of eleven to peddle by the slice
through the streets of Naples.  In 1902, when Dad was in his twenties and
Sally was a baby, the family came to New York.  Dad set up the first
pizzeria in the East Harlem section; now pizzerias dot the blocks.
(...)
   It's a sausage cheese pizza Sally is making.  Italian tomato sauce is
poured over the dough, then cubes of mozzarelle cheese are laid on, next
locatelli grated cheese, then little pieces of a dry link pork sausage which
is made in the restaurant.  Over all a pouring of oil; remember oil to an
Italian means olive oil and only the best.  The pizza board is picked up and
carried to the open brick oven, a quick shove and the pie slides into the
heat.  It bakes in five minutes to a golden cheese-dripping goodness.
   (...)(Col. 8--ed.)
   Pizzas are in four kinds, cheese 60 cents and $1.15, according to the
size, anchovy 65 cents and $1.25, sausage and cheese 85 cents and $1.65 and
half-and-half, large size only, $1.25.
   STUFFED PIE--The stuffed pizza, or call it calzonia, is Anna's great
glory.  This takes the same dough as the pizza, but the architecture is
different.  First ricotta, then mozzarelle, next thinly sliced prosciutto,
over this grated locatelli, a sprinkle of pepper and at last the olive oil.
Now the pie is folded like an apple turnover, its halves sealed with the
fingers.  It's smeared lightly with olive oil and into the oven.  The very
dickens to eat, finger food, of course, and for us it dribbled untidily, but
"love that pie all the same."

(I previously recorded a "calzone" in a 1947 Manhattan telephone book
ad...Lombardi's on Spring Street claims to be the first pizzeria in the
Western World.  It opened in 1905; Sally's dad came in 1902?...Pizza by the
slice in Naples in the 1890s?...Shouldn't that eleven-year-old have been in
school?--ed.)