MARTEONA

The origin of the pizza could be placed between the 16th and 17th centuries in the Kingdom of Naples with the Pizza Mastunicola which was topped with lard, cigoli, sheep’s cheese, pepper and basil. A preparation that, to some, could remind us of a gourmet proposal of a modern menu. Another preparation that spread throughout the Kingdom of Naples was the pizza alla cecinelli. This pizza, in fact, was topped with whitebait (in dialect, cecinelli), small fish.  For the marriage between pizza and tomato we have to wait for the middle of the 18th century when Neapolitan pizza makers began to use them with diffidence and that in a short time, however, this simple food was able to conquer both the palate of the people and that of the royals. It was Raffaele Esposito, owner of the historic Neapolitan tavern “Pizzeria di Pietro e that’s enough” and inventor of Pizza Margherita, who turned this poor dish into a king’s food and made it famous all over the world. It would have been he, in 1889, who dedicated a pizza to Queen Margherita of Savoy, from which it took its name. A simple preparation, which also wanted to represent the new Italian flag: basil for the green, mozzarella for the white and tomato for the red.