They have addressed an important controversy, and have wisely arrived at the correct answer. Pizza should be served with pineapple. I will go further: the perfect pizza is one with pineapple and jalapenos.
On the subject of pineapple, I will tolerate no disagreement. I’m a little more flexible on the jalapenos. Back in my day, when I was dating my wife-to-be, we’d typically head out to Shakey’s Pizza Parlor up on the hilltop of Kent, Washington, near the high school, and we’d order a Hawaiian pizza, always, with pineapple and Canadian bacon. That was the best pizza, until I discovered the joys of hot, spicy peppers combined with the sweetness of pineapple…my wife could not follow me into that den of sinful pleasure, but I forgive her, and we haven’t divorced yet.
IMPEacH!!
Ham and pineapple on a pizza is simply delicious.
Some people can’t handle flavour in their lives.
My children staunchly support the pineapple statement. I strongly support jalapeños, but only fresh, not pickled for pizza. My children prefer pairing the sweet pineapple with salty olives or artichoke hearts.
I’m a mushroom onion & jalapeño gal myself.
The only difference between Blotting Paper and Pizza is blotting paper is useful.
I heartily endorse this product or blog post.
Double garlic and anchovy.
I rest my case.
Nothing like, after a long trip back from downstate, heading for our favorite YooPee bar/restaurant for a Hawaiian pizza (which also had small shrimp) and a pitcher of dark beer. The feel of the road went away about half way through the meal.
Spam, pineapple, teriyaki sauce and cheddar cheese.
But the curst MUST/b> have olive oil. Or it aintent pizza!
My pronouns are actually they/them/their, but I’m still glad you want to keep me around.
I love pizza, it is my favourite food. I also agree with Terry Prattchet on the pineapple issue.
Jalapenapple™ — FTW (pronounced hala-pen-yapple)
I used to think I invented the combo by trying to plop some jalapenos on a “Hawaiian Pizza” (ham+pineapple) omitting the meat (ham) to make it totally veg. I even thought up that portmanteau to call it when asked what kind of pizza I wanted them to order for me. Good to know I’m not unique.
–
In college, pizza places around us always offered a Pizza with “Everything”, and so we’d often call in a delivery order of “everything with no dead fish” because nobody like anchovies on their pizza (NB @6).
Absent jalapenos, pineapple and red onion is very good. I go either tomato-pesto, or garlic cream with caramelized onion, for the sauce.
Many pizzas are better with pineapple, but all pizza is better with jalapenos.
I feel that jalapenos are the more fundamental mark of success in a good pizza.
also, mozarella goes on TOP of the toppings. D:
Pizza Margherita.
that is all.
Mushroom/onion is my 2nd choice when jalaps unavailable.
just so ya kno ?
Olive tapenade makes a good sauce, by the way. I like sun dried tomato and goat cheese too.
Sorry. I paid homage to the Tpyosian pantheon up in my #8. Not sure which god controls html idiocy, but I worship hir.
Writing as a Polynesian in the South Pacific, I could never understand the irrational disdain I occasionally see for Pineapple in the Northern hemisphere.
What is it with that?
It was at a Shakey’s that I had tuna and corn pizza.
I concur–with enthusiasm–on the pineapple. Not the jalapenos, though. I like anchovies on my pizza and they must be popular because lately when ordering pizza they claim to be out of anchovies.
As for “everything”…it isn’t *everything* if it doesn’t include anchovies.
(I usually go for anchovies, mushrooms, pepperoni and pineapple. But adding other meat is good.)
Trav Mamone reveals their moral depravity right away by admitting they like salt and caramel. And while I wouldn’t put anything past a salt-and-caramel-liker I would have expected better from you, PZ! Also the pizza in that picture has at least double the volume of toppings on it that would be sensible or taste good, another common American malady. And it looks like if you were to leave it in long enough for the cheese to be done the crust would be burned.
I don’t know if I can keep reading this blog, this is too upsetting.
Fentex, #19
Nothing complicated – it just tastes horrible!
When we first discovered the Pineapple in Europe we wisely decided to use them as table decorations. Nothing says fancy like a fruit from half the world away that looks like the devil’s own butt plug. It all went downhill when some bright spark thought he’d try eating one. Personally I’d have chosen the candles, the cruet set, the flowers, the vase containing the flowers, the soup spoons, the candlesticks, the tablecloth and the other guests before attempting to force that acidic ball of spikes and disappointment down my gullet…
For reference the correct pizza topping is three kinds of cheese and four kinds of meat.
The Jalapeno pepper is also an abomination. Anything that hurts you when you eat it and then you hurts again in an entirely different way when it comes out the other end isn’t really keeping up its end of the bargain in the great and venerable contract that is the foodstuff-consumer relationship.
Yuk ,Pineapple is the Devils fruit ,i would rather vote for a conservative than eat it .
cartomancer @23:
Last calendarnormative Sunday, I made some home made pizza at home.
Crust: flour, water, yeast, sugar, olive oil, crushed garlic and Aleppo peppers.
Topping: really good commercial pasta sauce, red onions, sweet green pepper, sweet yellow pepper, pepperoni, dry salami, browned Italian sausage, fresh mozzarella, shaved Asiago, and shaved Parmesan.
And we ate it while watching football. And I had a beer (Delerium Tremens) with it.
But I must disagree with your assessment of pineapple. If you manage to kill and skin one during the one hour that it is truly ripe, the sweetness is almost overwhelming.
PEPPERONI PURISTS WILL NOT BE SILENCED!
I love pineapple on my pizza, but jalapenos give me indigestion (as does garlic cream sauce).
@fentex:
Personally I think pineapple tastes fine on its own, or in other fruit-appropriate contexts. It just happens to be among the vast number of things that are edible but have no business being on pizza.
Pineapple is one of the foods of the gods. It cannot, however, be purchased through any supply line of more than producer/consumer. It needs to be taken from the plant when its ripe and eaten before it notices its been cut.
As for pizza I used to live an hour from the UK lake district in the Lune Valley. We used to be able to get Lancashire cheese which is soft and crumbly and the mature versions we could get sometimes were hot and sharp and you would put jalapeños on to cool the whole thing down a touch.
Just pineapple on a salty crust is good.
I don’t like pineapple, period. I’m not going to have something I don’t like on my pizza. Same goes for those slimy, wobbly greyish mushroom slices and a few other… ingredients.
Pineapple is delicious. Fresh Hawaiian pineapple is even more delicious, but really, it’s delicious either way.
You just can’t go wrong. Well, maybe on ice cream.
fentex
If you have only ever eaten fresh pineapple,
you have no conception of the horror that is tinned pineapple.
Please cancel my subscription to your newsletter. This is the silliest, most misguided, most–I’ll be frank–ignorant post I have ever seen on the internet ever.
Me and Cuttlefish @#6 will be over there enjoying a fuckin pizza. You all have a nice time with whatever the hell that fruity* item is.
*used literally, with neither American nor British sexual connotations implicit.
Hmmm… I like Hawaiian pizza, so I’ll have to give this a try sometime. Generally, my favorite “traditional” toppings are sausage and mushroom. Otherwise, I love a good BBQ chicken pizza.
I can only assume that you’ve never had good pizza.
There are plenty of toppings that are acceptable (though really, more than three is excessive), including pineapple, but the key is the crust. And while homemade can pass, the only way to get truly awesome crust is in a wood-burning or coal-burning oven at temperatures which you probably aren’t getting.
Pineapple on a pizza?
Are you mad?
While I have never tried it ”’Double garlic and anchovy.’ as Cuttlefish @6 recommends seems good.
@ 26 Ogvorbis
Crust: flour, water, yeast, sugar, olive oil, crushed garlic and Aleppo peppers
Argh, crushed garlic and Aleppo peppers in a “crust”? If you cannot put it in the sauce then it should not be there.
@ 29 Zeppelin
+1
Mushroom, black olives, pepperoni, salami and cheddar cheese is by far my fave. Pineapple, meh.
I’m totally for pizza, almost any combination of toppings and thickness of crust (the latest fad is thin crust, don’t you know…see #37…but I like all of them). I also like pineapple and peppers. I’m particularly fond of the Zorba at a neighborhood pizza place: ham, bacon, feta cheese, green peppers. Yum. Perhaps the spawn and I can go tonight. Yum yum.
My wife won’t touch pizza now. She was never fond of cheese anyway, then there were the two trips to the cath lab to discourage her from eating carcasses.
You might not believe this, but I never had pizza growing up in Jacksonville, Florida in the 50s and early 60s. I’m not sure if it wasn’t available or my folks had just never tried it. Not Southern cooking, I suppose.
Hmmmmm.
I’ve scoured both the Old and the New Testament on this one, and the Lord doesn’t mention pineapples anywhere. As for jalapeños, they are pointedly ommited from every single book in the Bible. He does, however, approve of barbecued chicken (Leviticus 1:14 – 18), so maybe we’re all on the wrong track?
If Pizza: Salty + Sweet + Bitter, be it tuna (I know, shouldn’t do that) plus a little crusty bacon and pineapple.
But Chillean EMPANADAS. Effing the world.
As good as jalapenos are, a little Hatch Green Chile will make it even better (it makes everything better, IMHO.)
I have even tried green chile flavored wine. It was good, but what to serve it with? Maybe green chile ice cream?
I forgot the absolutely obligatory salty black olives!
A pizza with mushrooms, chicken and olives is the One True Pizza, heathens!
;D
Sorry, while I accept that you have the right to assault your taste buds with whatever weird, wonderful and disgusting combinations on your pizza, there is only one pizza worth eating – the classic- The Margarita.
No, I’m sorry, but this all quite wrong.
A perfect pizza starts with a thin, thin, very thin crust covered in the sauce of the tomato with just a hint of garlic and oregano. Next comes the cheese – Provel, it must be – spread thick to the edges and beyond. No crust may be spared from the red and the white!
Atop this fine pizza, you will find no meat. No mammal flesh, no fish nor fowl shall taint it. Instead, the fruits of darkness: mushrooms and onions, and the dark fruits: olives. Also, throw some sliced bell peppers on there, even though they tend to repeat.
Finally, for the delicate part: the cooking. Do not brown the cheese! Provel is best hot and gooey – brown Provel is burned Provel. The crust should not be crisp, but it should not be soggy, either. It should droop beneath the weight of its toppings.
Now eat! Do not fear the unnatural-seeming way in which the Provel moves – didst thou expect the food of the gods to obey the conventions of mere mortals? Really, if you have the sauce and the crust, all you really need is the divine cheese. It will still be a holy dish. You could even put pepperoni on it, if that is your wont.
But pineapple? I weep, truly.
While I enjoy a good canadian bacon and pineapple pizza, I’ve found that pepperoni and pineapple is the superior choice. The pepperoni is much more savory than the bland ham, and coupled with the sweetness of the pineapple is close to perfection. Jalapenos are also delicious when added.
Settle down for a pizza story.
My mother had, and still has, an absolute hatred of cheese. To her, it stinks like rotten milk, which, to be sure, is an accurate description. As a socially-feral friendless kid, therefore, my only knowledge of cheese was Cheez Whiz, which my mother let me have on crackers. I first saw hard cheese when I was fifteen. I knew that something called pizza did in fact exist, and people ate it, but I neither saw, smelled, or ate a pizza until I was nineteen and going to university.
As a trainee projectionist for the University of British Columbia Film Society, I was in the projection booth when the senior techs scalped some tickets and ordered out for pizza and beer.
Ham and pineapple pizza.
Oh my, oh my! What virgin has experienced what I experienced! The unfamiliar aroma of olive oil drizzled on the crust, a crust crispy on the outside, tender and hot inside ; oregano and garlic in the tomato sauce (my only previous exposure to tomato sauce was Campbell’s tomato soup glopped onto elbow macroni, and I had never tasted garlic), and cheese — melty, HOT cheese burning my lips and tongue, and sweet, fresh, not-canned pineapple bits underneath!
It was nearly as good as sex! Like a freshly-hatched ducking, I imprinted on this pizza; so though I now eat (and make) many different kinds of pizzas, Ham-and-pineapple remains my favourite.
Sigh. What memories!
And you can keep your jalapenos — food should not hurt to eat or to excrete.
I have met very few pizzas I didn’t like and those that I did were usually because of bad crust not the toppings. My preference is for any toppings that combine sweet, savory and spicy, although the spicy can be added via sriracha if there are those with timid palates at the table. I usually order pineapple, jalapenos and anchovies for the savory/salty kick.
Pizza with pineapple. Hell. *raises his eyes to the sky and shakes vigorously the head*. Americans…
Here in Italy, pineapple on pizza is considered akin to heresy. Try suggesting it, and the following reaction will be similar to the one you’d get by blaspheming in Daesh-controlled territory.
Am I allowed to take a moderate position here? While Pineapple on pizza isn’t bad, it isn’t my favorite.
I’d rather have pepperoni and a variety of cheeses. Or here in Madison we have Ian’s Pizza with all sorts of delicious abominations, like Mac and Cheese pizza or, my favorite, bacon, cheddar, ranch, potato.
I love Hawaiian pizza. For exactly 2 slices. Jalapeno sounds like a great mix, but I can’t have desert for dinner, regardless of how spicy.
Pineapple on a pizza is truly glorious, though all of my friends decry the existence of, as they describe it, “fruit pizza”. They know nothing. I was once invited by a recently arrived Chinese vegetarian to partake in a savory pizza of their own making, topped with orange and banana. I can assure you all, it was as a nightmare from which there was no waking.
Standard order: Hawaiian with extra pineapple plus olives & pepperoni. I’ll try adding Jalapenos when Mrs & kids aren’t around, having a family who don’t do chilies is the bane of my existence.
Pepperoni and olives like a true Patriotic American.
I can’t believe the amount of communist pineapple eaters out there who are literally letting the terrorists win. They should have turned you people away at the border…
Muahaha. I like both pineapple and anchovies on my pizza.
OMG! Have been following your blog for years. You topics, insights, and good humour are highlight of day.
But PINEAPPLES ON PIZZA. Your are demon plagued! You are Satan spawn! You will burn for eternaty in Alberta tar sands!
:)
Pineapple on pizza kicks ass, but I prefer the spicy/sweet juxtaposition of pepperoni (instead of ham) with pineapple…and green bell pepper, partly charred in a coal-burning oven. Mozzarella’s obvious, but a little asiago mixed in never hurt anyone. Jalapenos are delicious, but I rarely order them on pizza because I am usually sharing with others who are quite sensitive to the capsaicin burn. I try to explain that jalapenos are pretty tame as chili peppers go, but some people just can’t handle them.
On the other hand, I cannot understand how people can eat mushrooms (on pizza, not on pizza, whatever). Not only do they have very little nutritional value, they’re…texturally innappropriate. I think I would be able to stomach the taste of mushroom (though it’d be far from a favourite), as long as it wasn’t paired with the gross sliminess. It still wouldn’t be something I’d go out of my way to put in my mouth; in fact, you’ve gotta wonder who first looked at a mushroom and thought to themself: man, that’d go nice fried in butter and served with my steak and chips. Especially since so many mushroom species are deadly poison (not just upset stomach poison, they’ll kill you muerte).
Never, it’s the devil’s fruit. Why do you think there are spikes on it? To warn you of it’s accursed taste.
I’m with cgilder on this one. Not crazy about the pineapple (though I love pineapple), but can definitely do with more fresh jalapenos, mushrooms, and onion. I’d throw in some Basque sausages as well unless I’m surrounded by people who only eat rabbit food.
I don’t know why one would waste a perfectly good pineapple by putting it on pizza – although honestly, having had pineapples where they were local the term “perfectly good” is being stretched a bit for ingredient quality. As far as the jalapenos go, while they aren’t bad they also seem kind of pointless. If you’re going to have a spicy pepper, have a spicy pepper. Serrano or arbol peppers are the minimum here, something with an actual kick is preferred. Take the habanero pepper. That’s good on a pizza.
Let me get this right, there are people who don’t like the taste of Pineapple?
What kind of mutant freaks are you?
I could understand not liking the fact it contains bromelain and dissolves flesh, but not liking the taste? That’s, odd. Bizarre. it’s not like it’s foul like anchovies or something.
I assume the jalapenos are on the pizza so you don’t have to taste the pineapple.
@25 davidc1
Yuk ,Pineapple is the Devils fruit ,i would rather vote for a conservative than eat it .
Now wait, there might be some reason to vote for a conservative, I mean Churchill was one, before, or was it after, he crossed the flour the first or second or whatever times. Come to think of it, how did he stay that chubby with all that exercise?
On the other hand, Thatcher in the UK or Harper in Canada, well even pineapple pizza sounds not too bad,
I don’t think I’ve ever had pineapple on pizza, but I do like it grilled with meat and tomatoes and other veggies, so I suspect it would go down well enough on the right pizza. (I think that if you cannot make a satisfactory pizza with cheese, sauce and crust, you should polish that skill until you add the complexity of toppings. Good toppings will never save a bad pizza.)
When I was a kid we made pizzas at home (we lived in the bush, and no one was going to drive an hour to the town for a pizza), and my favourite was to put slices of banana along with cheese, chicken and whatever those little red chilies were that grew in the back yard.
Now I’m craving an impossible to find pizza. CURSE YOU PZ!
Two of my four pineapple plants are blooming, fruit should ready to pick mid-summer. Pizza party at my place? You’ll have to travel to a small island in the middle of the Pacific though. And you should come before Dutch Preschooler eats it all.
robro@40,
Fad? FAD??!??!?! Wood-fired or coal-fired pizza is a fad????!!!??!? I suppose you think that using malted barley in beer or day-old bread in gazpacho is a fad.
OK, I’m no purist, but if you want to experience pizza you need to start with marinara. And I’m going to commit blasphemy here. Start with a good crust, paint it with a good (home made) pizza sauce, top with oregano, garlic slices, and a bit of olive oil, and now here is the blasphemy: add a good amount of grated parmigiano reggiano*. Then bake it for about five minutes in a 550 degree oven (preferably wood-fired, but at a minimum use a pizza stone).
*I just want to emphasize that I am talking about the real stuff, the closest thing to heaven in cheese known to humanity, and not that sawdust that comes in the green cans. Are you with me people? Are you ready to make America grate again?
I once put canned mandarin orange slices on a pizza. I think it’s better than pineapple because they’re not as fibrous and you still get the sweetness.
Pineapple…
On pizza…
Pineapple?
Really?
Look, I came here back when creationists still bothered to argue. I weathered the internecine storm that killed the first iteration of endless threads. I followed you into the depths of the social justice trench, blistering my hands to make it deeper.
But This?
This.
Will.
Not.
Stand!
Unfollow!
Unsubscribe!1!
Unfergernaaglealkjfie!!@21#!@!11
(Mind you, I eat my pizza with a knife and fork and will not apologise for doing so…)
What a Maroon, #69
You just had to do it, didn’t you? We’re already fighting the Great Pizza War of 2017 and you had to open up another front by venturing an opinion on which cheese is the best. The heretical Pineapple People have dug in, curse your eyes – we’ll never shift them if we’re divided on cheese too.
For reference it goes Mature Cheddar, Brie, Pecorino, Manchego (German Rauchkase at a pinch), Emmenthal, Wensleydale, Camembert, Red Leicester, Jarlsberg.
Unfergernaaglealkjfie? Is that a volcano in Iceland?
I’ve had pineapple and Canadian bacon pizza, and I wasn’t impressed. Still, I can imagine people liking it. Pizza was originally an Italian thing that became popular in the US after WW2. If you weren’t Italian-American, you had probably never even heard of it before the 1940s. Here’s a link to the New York TImes discussing the first time they mentioned pizza: https://www.nytimes.com/times-insider/2015/04/13/1944-the-times-discovers-pizza – “The pizza could be as popular a snack as the hamburger if Americans only knew more about it.”
There are a lot of pizza purists out there insisting on coal fired crusts or san marzano tomatoes and fresh mozzarella. I think pizza is more like a sandwich. Just about every culture has something like a sandwich – a starchy base with all sorts of relatively spicy stuff on top. I suppose someone might make a Fruit Loop and anchovy pizza and for all I know it might taste just fine if you are in the mood for Fruit loops and anchovies. I tend to prefer savory flavors on my pizza, but that’s just me.
I see I’ve created another schism. DEEPER RIFTS!
I shall also remind the heretics that you’re also on the blog of someone who likes…PEAS! I’ll eat ’em straight out of the pot. And when I visited England, I quite liked mushy peas.
But not on pizza. I won’t go that far.
The word pizza is derived from the Arab word pita, flat bread. (Sorry, New York, it doesn’t come from ‘give-me-a-pizza-that’.) So, sticking with the basics, I go with a little cheese, olive oil, red onions, some sliced olives, anchovies and just a sprinkling of red pepper flakes. I’ll add pineapple when Hawaiians stop eating SPAM.
As someone who spent his formative years in the islands, and who married someone who was born and raised there, it bothers me somewhat that anytime a food item is graced with chunks of pineapple, it is labeled Hawaiian.
That aside, I take no issue with those of you who enjoy pineapple on a pizza, but I do not share your tastes. This, despite that I thoroughly enjoy the fruit sans accompagnement, from fresh to canned.
I like pineapple on pizza, but my favorite is a good deep-dish Chicago style pizza with Italian sausage, mushrooms and black olives. There was a place called Calico’s near our college campus that served these up, and it was our favorite date-night joint.
That restaurant no longer exists, but we’ve tried to find a great Chicago style pizza wherever we live. (difficult in Texas)
The closest that we’ve found is a little hole-in-the wall in San Francisco called Star Pizza.
I’ve gotten fairly good at making my own version in a cast iron skillet. It starts with a good homemade crust with a bit of cornmeal added. I pre-bake the crust for a few minutes, then layer in the mozzarella, followed by lots of my homemade sauce.
I brown the baby bella mushrooms, then add the sausage to brown. These toppings are added on top of the sauce with the black olive slices. After a nice sprinkling of freshly grated Parmesan, the pie is baked until it is baked through and the top is brown and bubbly.
A nice salad and a lovely glass of wine completes the meal.
Your formulation has the unfortunate flaw that jalapenos taste like pain and nothing else.
Pineapple and blue cheese, on the other hand, is a delightful pizza topping.
The best pizza place in my hometown was run by Greeks.
Pepperoni, mushroom, and green pepper was my favourite.
#TeamPineapple
Though I’m not known for being picky about what goes on my pizza. So long as there is enough cheese, I might even eat anchovies and broccoli on pizza. But maybe not together.
I’m a pineapple hater. I am using the word “hate” here about pineapple. That is not hyperbole. I have a deep and abiding hatred for the taste of pineapple on pizza or otherwise. So does my wife, as it happens.
We stayed in a hotel in Paris once which decided without fuss or fanfare to leave us a delightful gift in our room while we were out. It was *hot* that day and we got back to the room hot, uncomfortable, disheveled and in urgent need of refreshment. At first glance, the hotel’s gift seemed like a dream come true, exactly what we needed.
However, needless to say it was an assortment of pineapple six ways.
The other thing about that hotel in Paris. It was the Hilton. We stayed there in 2003 which was not a good time to be googling “Paris Hilton”.
All this talk about pizza has reminded me of a book I read years ago: it was the memoirs of a paleontologist who’d dug up Gorgonopsid fossils in South Africa. He talked about going to a bar that advertised that they had pizza while returning to civilization from a dig: he said that it was gluey to the point that he wondered if the cook had squeezed a bottle of Elmer’s over it and he was strongly suspicious that the meat on it was baboon.
PZ @75:
Peas on pizza? Hmm, I’ve got frozen vegetarian pizza and frozen peas in my freezer right now…
Chas: ♥
If you’ve not eaten pizza in Napoli, you’ve not eaten pizza. You will generally get a choice between Pizza Marinara or Pizza Margherita. All else is heresy.
So timely.
The pizza I made last night: tomato paste and extra virgin olive oil on the base, topped with
chopped onions,
minced garlic,
chopped red capsicum, (red peppers to you yanks)
chopped mushrooms,
bacon pieces,
sous vide chicken breast slices,
black olives,
jalapenos,
a few mint leaves,
and generous lashings of mozzarella!
Could not have been better! My wife’s was the same, minus the olives and jalapenos… :-)
dutchmama #73
Uhm, yeah… about that, best you pretend you never read that name. Not that it’s important or anything, like say, the secret volcano lair of the Arctic Pineapple Eradication Society…just a little autocorrect error, yeah, that’s what it was… So, how about that local sports team, and/or the weather?
Add roast Brussels Sprouts to that and I might even start believing in heaven!!
microraptor @ 84:
Peter Ward’s Gorgon: Paleontology, Obsession, and the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth’s History is the book of which you are thinking. That was a my gateway
drugbook into hard-core paleontology publications. And I read it again about every three years.Peter Morris @88:
Wait. Mint leaves on pizza? Mint leaves? Mint? Mint?
Pineapples are an abomination unto Nuggan!
cartomancer,
Surely you’re not suggesting putting cheddar on pizza? Cheddar has its place, but not on pizza.
However many pineapples one places in the vicinity of pizza, they never become part of it. Even in your mouth, you’re tasting pineapple OR pizza while chewing.
So, I’m perfectly fine with pineapple on pizza, just don’t pretend they’re actually a combined flavour.
=8)-DX
(plus yes, jalapenos on everything)
Silver Fox @76,
Source? Because the people who do etymology for a living aren’t nearly as certain.
And then there’s this under pita:
So pizza may somehow be connected to pita, which may be of Modern Hebrew or Modern Greek origins.
What a Maroon 93:
An aged cheddar has a flavour reminiscent of an 8 to 12 month Asiago — still a little soft but can still be grated. I have used cheddar for a spam and pineapple teriyaki pizza. I have also used a little bit (in addition to mozzarella (it was cheap mozzarella, not the good stuff)) of cheddar when I am out of Parmesan, Asiago, or other Italian hard cheeses. It works.
I look at pizza as a canvas upon which one can place a gustatory artwork. Whether one goes very traditional (pizza Margherita (the simple elegance of the Grotte de Lascaux)), Renaissance (crushed tomatoes, mussels, shrimp, clams, squid, and a touch of garlic and Romano (picture the pizza equivalent of Botticelli’s La nascita de Veneri), or pepperoni, shrooms, peppers, onions, sausage, four kinds of cheese (the multilayered splendour of Michelangelo’s The Last Judgement)),
or full-on modernist — what pizza would evoke Pollack, or Warhol, or O’Keefe? Perhaps these modern abominations (in the eyes of traditionalists) are food artists embracing multiple traditions in new ways? A BBQ Chicken pizza with smoked cheddar may not be a traditional pizza but, just as Gaugin’s Tahitian Women on a Beach is not traditional, it is still as valid and pleasureable as Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring.
In other words, there is room for traditional Pizza Margherita right alongside a pizza with roasted pork, corn, black beans, jalapeno and Hatch chili peppers, onions, cilantro and pepper jack cheese. It is as much a matter of taste (and one’s taste can vary wildly from day to day) as art. I do not limit myself to one genre or period of art. Nor will I limit myself to only one genre or recipe for pizza!
What a Maroon, #95
I do think Cheddar has a place on pizzas, yes. As I noted before, the three cheese pizza is a thing of wonder. In fact I was in my twenties when I first tasted pizza that wasn’t made with cheddar (we live in a very rural part of the world and make our own mostly), and Cheddar is the local cheese of choice, given that Cheddar itself is just down the road).
As for the origins of the word, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find Arabic speakers in its DNA. The earliest use we have recorded appears to be a Latin charter from 997AD in Gaeta, near Naples, which states that a local Bishop is to be paid rent in “pizzae”, twelve at Christmas and twelve at Easter each year. Or so Wikipedia tells me anyway. If the word is from a southern Italian, turn of the first millennium, context then it would have emerged from a trilingual (Latin/Italian, Greek, Arabic) culture that swapped, blended and transferred words freely. Sicily was in the possession of Arabic-speaking rulers at this time (before being conquered by the Normans in the 11th century), and Arabic-speaking merchants traded freely all over Italy and with the Byzantine colonies there. Though, of course, the Bishop of Gaeta’s pizzas would be far different from what we know – no tomatoes for one, and certainly no pineapple or peppers. In fact, they would probably have been far more like a traditional Roman patina – a garnished flatbread dish eaten since antiquity – or one of the many analogues in other mediterranean cultures.
You can put cheddar in apple pie. It’s delicious.
Cheddar also belongs on pizza, if you’re out of everything else. So does pretty much every other cheese out there, including camambert and the local stinky, stinky cheese.
rq @98:
Last summer, I made a pizza with fresh herbs — basil, oregano, rosemary. I (mentally) divided the pizza in quarters. In one corner, fresh mozzarella. In another, gorgonzola. In the third, Asiago, Parmesan and Romano. In the fourth quarter, brie. I pre-baked the crust and them topped it. I baked it until the soft cheese were bubbly. It was good.
Again, pizza is art and the crust is your canvas.
OK, you can put chorizo on your flipping pizza but tell Jamie Oliver that chorizo doesn’t belong in a bloody paella.
Jrkideau@65 .He was Tory ,then LLoyd George led him astray to the Liberals ,after WW1 he crossed back to the dark side .
He is supposed to have wrote a unsent letter in which he stated the hated the conservative party ,and he was hated by them during the 20/30s
In his favour he loved cats .
The Boss @75 i care for my twin brother he hates peas ,the only way i can get him to eat them is to cook them with potatoes and do mashed potatoes .
It just needs one more ingredient. Anchovies.
Salt and sweet and spicy together. Yum! Oh – you doubt the goodness, but it is remarkably tasty!
Ogvorbis @91:
Thanks, knew someone here would recognize the book.
cartomancer,
I don’t deny that it’s plausible that the word pizza has an Arabic origin, just that the definitive evidence for or against said origin isn’t there.
As for cheddar, well, chacun à son goût. But I still stand by my contention that parmigiano reggiano is the pinnacle of cheesetopia.
I’ll pass on the pineapple, but double up on the jalapenos, please.
Sorry PZ, but if it doesn’t have mushrooms, it isn’t a real pizza.
@47 vucodlak
Fucking St. Louis and its piles of tasteless, colon-clogging Provel cheese.
Best pizza I’ve ever had is Mom’s. No sauce, just drizzled OVOO, fresh garlic and black pepper. Toppings: homemade spicy Italian sausage, onion, mushroom, green pepper with a LIGHT sprinkling of mozzarella.
Most US pizza places go way overboard with cheese. You should be able to see the toppings, not a greasy, gooey white blob that heals itself after being cut. Not to mention not being able to shit for three days.
Don’t get me started on the abomination of deep dish Chicago style covered with a half gallon of marinara. My stomach turns just looking at that mess.
Toppers Pizza out of Barrie, ON has a pizza called the “Tropical Heatwave”, which is pepperoni, pineapple, bacon, banana peppers, garlic butter and extra cheese (Mixed cheeses, not just mozzarella).
It’s pretty amazing.
I have never had “Chicago style deep dish pizza”.
Now that I’ve looked it up, I shall continue not having it.
*gag*
Unfortunately most restaurant pizza is made with tasteless industrial mozzarella. Either get it with REAL buffalo mozzarella, or with a delicious combo of, say, gouda, edam, romano, and blue cheeses (my favourite).
Someone above said, “No sauce.” No sauce? No sauce? What will you do without red molten lava squirting out onto your tongue when you bite down? And, “Just a hint of mozzarella.” I will agree that there can be too much sauce, too much cheese, and too many toppings on a pizza.
But when a pizza has *just* the right amount of sauce, cheese, and toppings, where all of the flavours and textures, compliment and enhance one another — well, it’s heaven on a (flattened, open-face) bun!
There’s a new place near my office that will give you a side of fresh chopped serrano peppers to put on your pizza. I like to put it on a pepperoni and pineapple. #teampineapple but I support #freedomofpizza.
In my experience, it’s incredibly hard to get decent fresh pineapple in Europe. Too frequently the fruit you do get isn’t ripe — and I suspect is served that way, underripe — but, for some reason, rarely ripens. And it’s expensive.
None of which was true in California. There is stunning difference (at least in my memory) between the usual pineapple purchased in California, and those purchased in, say, France or England.
Iceland’s president forced to clarify views on pineapple pizza ban:
I like the way he turned the situation into a teaching moment.