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Pinapple On Pizza
How the irrational rules we create reveal the limitations of the human brain
What, aside from pasta noodles, could be more quintessentially Italian than pizza? We all know the basic formulation: a thin base of wheat dough, a smearing of tomato sauce, cheese on top of that, and then a few choice morsels scattered across the cheese: perhaps ham, olives, or thin slices of sausage. A great many people therefore insist that putting pineapple on a pizza is sacrilege, an offense against gastronomy and a sure sign the offender lacks any understanding of authenticity.
Which is hilarious, because pizza itself is a recent invention and in no way authentically “Italian” at all. The tomato base is only possible because tomatoes came from the New World during the great Age of Discovery when wooden ships explored the globe and brought back amazing things like saffron, potatoes, and tomatoes. As for the other supposedly “authentic” Italian dishes, we need only remember that pasta noodles arose because travelers like Marco Polo brought back tales of the rice noodles found in Asia. Lacking rice, Europeans used what they had available (wheat) and so by this roundabout route we eventually get Spaghetti a la Bolognese, the primary ingredients of which (noodles and tomatoes) aren’t Italian at all. The same goes for that other supposedly quintessential Italian dish, rissoto. Rice, like the concept of noodles, came from Asia. And the saffron with which many rissotos are enhanced (along with Spanish pallella) comes likewise from the East.
Although the Victorians invented the notions of “civilization” and “culture” around a century anda half ago, they are entirely spurious creations that arose primarily to justify the colonial exploitation that was a non-trivial component of British economic success during that time. In reality (a place culture warriors can’t locate on their mental maps) human societies are, always have been, and for as long as we may survive always will be, patchworks that incorporate threads from many different influences and times. This is, by the way, what makes the neurotic Politically Correct notion of “cultural appropriation” so abjectly stupid as well as being offensively divisive.
The reason so many people cling to ludicrous injunctions such as “thou shalt not place…
