Pompeii Pizza: Was the World’s Oldest Pizza a Hawaiian Pizza?

2023-06-28 15:49:15

Culture Ancient delicacies

What could be on the “Pizza Pompeii”.

Status: 28.06.2023 | Reading time: 3 minutes

Wine goblet, fruit and flatbread: pizza or focaccia?

What: AFP

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Archaeologists have found a 2,000-year-old wall painting depicting a round flatbread. Next to it is a yellow fruit reminiscent of a pineapple. Was the world’s oldest pizza a Hawaiian pizza?

When archaeologists in Pompeii uncovered new murals in a residential area that had been buried for almost 2000 years, their mouths were watering. In addition to a wine goblet and all kinds of fruit, she laughed at a pizza on a ceremonial plate. This proves that, along with democracy, underfloor heating, philosophy and the water closet, the crispy flatbread is one of the achievements of antiquity that we Europeans can still be proud of – at least more than slavery and gladiator slaughter.

In Naples, where today’s pizza comes from and was only recognized by UNESCO in 2017 as a delicious heritage of mankind, the archaeologists’ sensational find is viewed in a slightly different way. Because neither tomatoes nor mozzarella can be seen in the picture, according to the local Neapolitan edition of the “Corriere della Sera”, the dish is more likely to be called “focaccia”, i.e. as a flatbread, which at best can be seen as a forerunner of the global oven feast between wood-fired and frozen pizza look at

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Tomatoes in a snack bar in Pompeii would indeed have been a sensation, for then the ancient Romans would not only have known – as has been proven – China, but even America; the edible tomato comes from Mexico and the name means “thick water”. Because so much pre-Columbian culinary Latin would be too much of a good thing, connoisseurs interpret the conspicuous fruit side dishes on the antique pizza as dates and pomegranates. Attempts to classify a yellow ingredient as a pineapple and thus predate the Hawaiian pizza by almost 2000 years must be considered a failure.

“Between the Peasant and the Sacred”

That doesn’t mean, however, that the dough dish called pizza doesn’t have an exotic pedigree. Culinary historians derive the flatbread from Greek cuisine. From the pita bread that is still known today, the treat made its way to what was then Greek Neapolis and established itself as pizza in Italy, only to conquer the Mezzogiorno from Naples in 1900 and then the entire planet.

The fact that fruit as a topping suggests something sweet goes well with the history of the dish. Because as early as the 18th century, people in Naples loved pizza as a kind of dessert, served with confectionary and fruit, as gourmet Alexandre Dumas noted in his Italian travel notes more than 150 years ago. The location of the antique pizzeria also fits the tradition. The “Insula X”, in which the fresco appeared, was equipped with a bakery. Because the ordinary Romans didn’t have their own kitchen and, like today’s nerds, ate fast food on the street, the practical flatbread inevitably evolved.

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Pompeii’s director, Gabriel breeding bar, sees the iconography of the picture, which at least shows a silver goblet, somewhere “between the rural and the sacred”. With this, the development of the pizza, which is still used today as a cold snack by farmers in the fields and is not scorned by star chefs, was optically overstepped. A little more patience, and the Italian restaurant around the corner will have a “Pizza Pompeji” on the menu: with dates and pomegranate and without top heat from Vesuvius, hopefully not too burnt.