The word pizza derives from an Italian term at least a thousand years old for a type of savory flat bread. The type of pie we now think of as pizza, with tomato sauce, has been around since the 15th century, when tomatoes were first brought back to Europe from the New World. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Etymology of Pizza”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, I’m Gabriel from Arlington, Texas.
Hi, Gabriel. Welcome to the show.
Hello, Gabriel.
What’s up?
So, I was at Olive Garden one day, and I ordered some pizza.
And I thought, I only see pizza on menus of American and Italian places.
So I thought, maybe another country made pizza, but Italy made it better.
So, where did pizza originate?
So you’re saying when you go to, what, a Chinese restaurant, you don’t see pizza?
Yes.
Or when you go to a barbecue restaurant, no pizza?
No.
Okay.
Yeah, Gabriel, you’ve asked a wonderful question that has a whole lot of history behind it.
Because there have been forms of flatbread covered with good stuff, tasty stuff like pizza, for a very long time.
All the way back at least 1,000 years in Italy, there was a kind of flatbread that had a name that sounded sort of like pizza.
But you know what? As we know it didn’t come about in Italy until the 15th century because they didn’t have tomatoes in Italy at all.
Tomatoes are native to this part of the world, to South America.
And so when the explorers started bringing back tomatoes in the 15th century, then people started using them in different dishes.
And they weren’t that popular at first. A lot of people thought, oh, that’s just a gross foreign food. Let’s not use it.
But especially in southern Italy, they started spreading this sauce on a flat bread and calling it pizza.
And adding things that they already had, which is a good sausage and good cheese and good other vegetables.
Yeah. Gabriel, what do you like on your pizza?
I like pepperoni and sausage.
Sure. Okay. You’re a meat man. Classic.
And did you know that they just created the world’s largest pizza here in California?
What?
Really?
Where?
I didn’t know that.
Is there any left?
Are there leftovers?
No, this was really cool.
This was just a few weeks ago in Fontana, California.
They made this pizza that made it into the Guinness Book of World Records, Gabriel.
And it was about a foot and a half wide, but it was really, really, really long.
It wasn’t round.
It was like this really long one, longer than a mile.
Wow.
Oh, wow.
That’s crazy.
How crazy is that?
And a lot of tomatoes.
Yeah, yeah.
That’s crazy.
Yeah, and it weighed more than an elephant.
And it was just kind of this crazy thing that all these people did, but then they boxed it up and took it to food banks and gave it away to people.
Well, Gabriel, you asked something I think is also important.
Like, why is this such an American tradition?
It’s a question for a food expert, right?
Why did Americans take so wonderfully to this foreign dish?
Why does it feel so much like ours now?
I don’t really know.
Yeah, it didn’t come over here until the late 19th century, Italian immigrants in the Northeast.
Yeah, but it’s a good comfort food, right?
Don’t you feel better after you eat it?
Yes, I do.
Thank you so much for your call.
Really appreciate it.
Call us again sometime with another question, all right?
Okay.
Thank you.
Take care.
Thanks, Gabriel.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
