"Where are you off to without your pineapple?"

Semi-serious story of the loving relationship between pineapple and pizza

So, do you put your pineapple raw or cooked on your pizza? Ok, if you are still reading us after this opening, it means that you are a fan of this magazine so you should be rewarded. A few years ago, in 2017, the declaration of the president of Iceland that he wanted to ban the use of pineapple on pizza caused a sensation. The famous star chef Gordon Ramsay, the father of all "Kitchen Nightmares", imme- diately lined up alongside him. However, two years later, in 2019, the genius Franco Pepe created AnaNascosta, where the slice of pineapple (natural) is wrapped in raw ham placed inside a fried cone with melted Grana Padano PDO and liquorice powder and thus won the "Dish of the Year 2019" award at the "Identità Golose" event in Milan. Perhaps driven by Franco's success, others pricked up their ears and two professionals like Simone Lombardi (Milanese of Mexican origin) and Pier Daniele Seu gave life to some splendid creations with this famous "tropical" fruit. However, it must be said that pineapple pizza has been on the scene since at least 1962 and bears the name of Hawaiian pizza.

They say it was invented by the Canadian Sam Panopoulos, originally from Greece, at "The Satellite" restaurant in ChathamKent, Ontario. According to Panopulos, in the 1960s pizza was still an unknown product in Canada and, after having tasted American pizza, he decided to re-propose it in his own restaurant, adding pineapple in syrup. Apparently, it wasn't meant to be a provocation or a marketing experiment, as Panopulos told the BBC: "We added pineapple to the pizza just for fun, to see what it would taste like. The sweetness of the pineapple and the flavour of the ham created a pleasant contrast". However, the presence of pineapple in "savoury" cuisine was nothing new as Czech cuisine already featured recipes with pineapple and Prague ham but, more generally, sweet and sour cuisine had been known since the European Renaissance period. However, the recipe was very successful and spread all over the world. According to the analysis by Alessandro Pirollo in an article for La cucina italiana: "It was probably the criticisms that decreed its success, which prompted the most curious to taste it: after the initial uncertainty, everyone went crazy for the sweet-savoury combination and pineapple pizza began to travel to the United States" an interesting revelation by Pirollo himself. Finally, a curious fact. If you are not daredevils but rather "tested chemists", you can delight in using pineapple in the dough, as recommended by chef Francisco Goya and gastronome Nathan Myrhvold in Modernist Bread, the complete work on bread "made in USA". In fact, the two passionate authors recom mend using between 0.1% and 0.5% (of the total dough) fresh pineapple juice (or 0.3% papaya juice, but that's another story) because pineapple contains proteases, i.e. a class of enzymes that can denature proteins (including gluten), increas ing entropy, i.e. the amount of heat exchanged. Basically, technical stuff. But that make us understand how beautiful and varied the world of pizza is. Even with pineapple. The Canadian pizza chef sold his place in the 80s and never patented the Hawaiian pizza, which today can be found on the menus of pizzerias all over the world. Without taking anything from Panopulos, to be honest, some people believe that Hawaiian pizza is a variant of the Hawaiian toast (an open slice of toast with cheese, ham, pineapple and maraschino cherry), created in 1955 by the first TV chef in Germany: Clemens Wilmenrod. Pineapple pizza (obviously arranged in slices - in syrup - after cooking the pizza) has therefore been generating fervent debates for over 50 years: according to a 1999 market survey, Hawaiian pizza was the most popular in Australia with over 15% of orders and in 2015 Just Eat magazine defined it as the most widespread on menus. Yet, in 2016, in the United States it was listed by a survey as one of the three least favorite toppings by consumers after anchovies and mushrooms, although at the same time it was also the eighth most popular type. It is no coincidence that since then we have returned to talking about pizza with pineapple: is it perhaps thanks to the multinationals that produce it?

Whatever you do, just put your art in it. We’ll take care of the rest.

BY CATERINA VIANELLO