Historian: Classic Italian dishes like pizza not truly Italian

DW (English)

Are neither Neapolitan pizza nor parmigiano cheese authentically Italian? That's what Italian Historian Alberto Grandi claims. But is he right?

Transcript

00:00This man is turning everything we thought we knew about Italian cuisine on its head.

00:07In the major Italian tourist cities, like Florence, Rome and Venice,

00:13it seems to me scamming the tourists has become a national sport,

00:17to feed them any old garbage and claim it's fine Italian cuisine.

00:21There's no reason to say Italians cook any better than the French, Germans or Austrians.

00:28Alberto Grandi is an Associate Professor of Economic History at the University of Parma.

00:33In his books, he claims that pizza has been a thing in Italy only since the 1950s,

00:40true Parmesan cheese comes from Wisconsin,

00:43and that Italian grandmas can't cook.

00:45What truth is there to his claims?

00:48To help make sense of it, we turn to Maddalena Fossati, Editor-in-Chief of La Cucina Italiana.

00:54She's advocating for Italian cuisine to be included on UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage.

01:00Of course, we also talk to ordinary Italians.

01:05Theory number one. Neapolitan pizza isn't from Italy.

01:12The pizza we eat today, Neapolitan pizza, is more American than it is Italian.

01:19Excuse me? Pizza is the quintessential Italian dish.

01:24Everyone knows it and loves it.

01:26In fact, pizza was founded as far back as the 18th century in Naples.

01:31Sure, it looked a bit different back then.

01:34Pizza was an inexpensive meal for Naples' poor lower class.

01:38Bread topped with whatever was left over at home.

01:41Before the great emigration of the late 19th and early 20th centuries,

01:46the pizza eaten in Naples was a very basic product.

01:49It would have disappeared from our cuisine.

01:52The Neapolitans themselves despised it.

01:55Like all recipes, pizza has certainly evolved and changed, of course.

02:00That doesn't mean it doesn't have an origin, though.

02:03The birthplace of pizza is in Naples.

02:06Theory number two. Until the 1980s, olive oil was only used as lamp fuel.

02:13Today, Italians consume per capita up to 13 liters of olive oil a year.

02:19But is that a new thing?

02:22Olive oil was never part of the famous Mediterranean diet.

02:27For cooking, they used pork fat instead.

02:30Come again?

02:32Even in the 19th century, travelers raved about the taste of Italian oils.

02:37There were certainly people producing high-quality olive oil,

02:41but the kind that the vast majority of Italians knew was a very poor quality.

02:45It was scarce. There wasn't much of it.

02:47It was expensive, and it was used for everything but cooking.

02:51Theory number four. The only true Parmesan cheese comes from Wisconsin.

02:58Parmigiano-Reggiano is in essence an Italian cheese that originated in the Middle Ages, period.

03:05That's true. But it's changed significantly over the centuries.

03:09The original Parmesan was softer, its texture firmer.

03:13Not until after World War II did Italian Parmesan evolve into the crumbly hard cheese we know today.

03:20In Wisconsin, though, it's still made like it was 100 years ago.

03:27To taste the Parmesan our grandparents knew, we have to go to Milwaukee, not Parma.

03:32A 1,000-year-old cheese is just awful, though.

03:36Theory number five. Italian grandmothers can't cook.

03:42Not only do the grandmothers of this country know how to cook, they're the heart of Italian cuisine.

03:48Italian grandmothers didn't even know how to cook.

03:52Or rather, they could maybe cook three dishes like everyone else in the world.

03:56Holiday dishes, tortellini, lasagna, that sort of thing.

04:00The rest was just making do with what little they had.

04:06And is Italian culinary tradition truly about perfection and unchanging recipes?

04:14The whole world knows Italian cuisine. I don't think it's just 100 years old or 50 or 10 years old.

04:20These dishes have been handed down from great-grandfather to grandfather to the children and so on, down through the generations.

04:28The core of my work is really to show that traditions are invented and, above all, that they can change.

04:34That's essentially what it's all about.

04:38I know, of course, that we dressed differently 1,000 years ago, lived differently and had different ingredients.

04:44That doesn't mean we should deny that we were who we were.

04:49I think a lot of love goes into preparing food in Italy.

04:56Whether it's 400 or 40 years old, Italian cuisine is ultimately more than just the sum of its ingredients.

05:02Even its harshest critics can't resist it.

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