Pizza: A Slice of Culinary History

The oldest recorded use of the word "pizza" appears in a Latin manuscript from May 997 AD—a notarial document from the town of Gaeta, then part of the Byzantine Empire. It states that a tenant was required to give the local bishop duo de cimpe—literally twelve pizzas—along with a pork shoulder and kidney annually on Christmas, and another twelve pizzas with a couple of chickens on Easter Sunday. That's the earliest known mention of a word that would eventually describe a global industry worth $128 billion.

The Deep Origins of Flatbread with Toppings

Pizza-like foods existed long before the word itself. In the sixth century BC, Persian soldiers under Darius the Great baked flatbreads with cheese and dates on top of their battle shields. Ancient Greeks supplemented their bread with oils, herbs, and cheese. An early literary reference appears in Virgil's Aeneid, when the prophet Celaeno foretells that the Trojans would not find peace until they are forced by hunger to eat their tables. In Book VII, Aeneas and his men are served round cakes topped with cooked vegetables—and when they eat the bread, they realize these are the prophesied tables.