The study of history can be accomplished in many ways. Carol Helstosky, a University of Denver history professor, studies it through what people eat — and why.
During a two-year seminar course titled “We Are What We Eat,” Helstosky and her University of Denver students focused on world history as told through the spread of pizza. Now she shares that knowledge with readers around the globe as part of a book series called “Edible,” distributed by the London-based publisher Reaktion.
Books about the history of hamburgers and pancakes have already been published. Thirteen more are in the oven, including those about caviar, chocolate and hot dogs.
Whether they’re pizza fanatics or pizza deniers, readers are quite likely to find Helstosky’s book fascinating. Her research is impressive, she writes clearly, the photographs are captivating, and the approach to delineating world history through a specific food actually works.
As might be expected, pizza does derive from Italy, more specifically from the city of Naples. A flatbread with various toppings at breakfast, lunch and dinner, pizza became a regular meal for the urban poor of Naples.
The many-faceted food eventually spread throughout Italy and cut across socioeconomic classes so that it no longer carried the stereotype of sustenance for the impoverished.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, millions of Italians left their homeland. Unsuprisingly, a large percentage of those emigrants landed in the United States.
Helstosky discovered that the first mercantile license to sell pizza in the United States is dated 1905. Gennaro Lombardi held the license; he opened his pizza shop on Spring Street in New York City. The pizza chefs who trained with Lombardi spread throughout the United States (and sometimes other nations).
But pizza as a mass-marketed food did not catch on throughout the United States until after World War II.
As Helstosky says, after World War II, pizza started “its meteoric rise from a marginal ethnic food to America’s favorite meal.” That popularity explosion included pizza baked at home, pizza purchased frozen at the supermarket, pizza consumed in specialty restaurants and pizza eaten off the premises, thanks to a delivery-service culture.
Today, Helstosky muses, “Those who make and eat pizza can be divided into two general camps — the first favoring taste, simplicity, authenticity and quality; the second opting for convenience, cost, abundance and creativity.”
Whether pizza purists and mass-market pizza consumers dominate a family, they usually agree on one principle: It is a meal that never seems to grow monotonous.
Steve Weinberg is a freelance writer and biographer in Columbia, Mo.
Nonfiction
Pizza: A Global History by Carol Helstosky, $15.95
