[Sca-cooks] 16th Century Pizza

[Johnna Holloway]

I should explain that I posted the pizza note because it's just another
funny, well not so funny historical question that we have dealt with time
and time again on this list and since it's showing up all over the web 
credited to
this website I am betting we will see people saying they can serve 
modern pizzas
at events because of this website and this information.

Hey they have a source that says 1522.

I would suggest the reasons we would not be seeing tomatoes on pizza in 
Naples as in

"but later the poorer people of Naples added the new tomatoes to their 
yeast dough and created the first simple pizza, as we know it."

 is more a question of how long it took the plant to become established 
and produce
enough fruit for it to become cheap enough to be used as the street food.
Would something so rare and so expensive be used or available to be used 
as street food?

We also have the new translation of Scappi so we can use that to 
establish what
was being said in Italy during the 16th century, but I am sure the 
argument will be made that
the papal court did not eat the street food that was eaten in Naples.

I cc'ed the entire post to Baroness Helewyse so it would be in her 
in-box when she gets home from the war.
I'm sure she'll be amused.
We are all co-authors by the way of this rather famous article:
"Sixteenth Century Italian and Spanish Tomato References" by *Johnnae* 
llyn Lewis, Helewyse de Birkestad, and Brighid ni Chiarain.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-VEGETABLES/16C-Tomato-art.rtf.
http://www.mkcc.rhawn.com/MKCCfiles/16thCITomatoReferences.html

Why don't you (and anyone else that cares to respond) send your comments 
about
historical /inaccuracy/ directly to the site owner at  lstrad at hevanet.com

Johnnae


Raphaella DiContini wrote:
> There were variations of "pizza" pre-1600, but none that I know of mention anything about tomato. If you're just talking about flat disks of some sort of dough with toppings, most of the recipes that I've seen tend to be much more often fruit, sugar and sweet spices. 
>
> Just a quick run through Scappi snipped 
> Translation from Helewyse de Birkestad snipped
> In joyous service, 
> Raffaella 
>
> --- On Thu, 8/6/09, Johnna Holloway <johnnae at mac.com> wrote:
>
>   
>> From: Johnna 
>> Here's something akin to 'they spiced
>> rotten meat and ate it'...
>>
>> Pizza dates to 1522 according to whatscookingamerica.net.
>> This date is now being cited all over the web as the
>> authentic date
>> for pizza with tomatoes.
>>
>>     
>