Did You Know How a Pizza Gets its Flavour From?: You are about to unwind after a long day’s work curled up on your couch ready to watch your favourite movie, there is one more thing that you need to make this moment perfect – a delicious pizza!
Have you ever taken a moment to ponder, who invented this fantastic hearty dish? And from where does a pizza get its taste from, and why is it so difficult to stop yourself from reaching for a second or third slice? Read on to get your answers.
History of Pizza
We often associate Pizza with Italian cuisine, however not many know that Pizza was invented long ago by ancient Egyptians and Russians who consumed this in the form of flatbread topped with olive oil and herbs. The Modern-day pizza that we know originated in Naples, Italy, as a way to provide fast, easy, and affordable cuisine to the working class. It was only after World War II when pizza became popular among Americans, as the soldiers stationed in Italy brought their appetite for this delightful dish home.
Today, pizza has evolved from being just a simple pie with marinara sauce and cheese to a pie that’s loaded with different pizza toppings to further elevate its taste.
Taste buds
It all starts with your taste buds. Sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami are the five flavours that the human tongue recognizes. Our taste buds are stimulated by several components in food, causing us to experience these various flavours. We all know about the other four flavours, but do you know about Umami? Umami is the savoury rich meaty flavour taste of foods. In Japanese, this word means “Delicious”. Umami gets triggered when you have food rich in glutamates. The two basic ingredients that go on any pizza are juicy tomatoes and gooey cheese, and both have high glutamate content, thus making it a divine experience when we bite into a mushy, cheese-filled slice of pizza.
Smart Flavor Pairing
Some culinary experts claim that matching foods with comparable flavour components makes them taste even better. And the more compounds meals have in common, the better they’ll work together. So, how does this affect pizza? Cheese and tomatoes are built of the same components and hence they are like a match made in heaven.
Varied Pizza Toppings
Apart from the above-mentioned two essential components of a pizza, the different varieties of pizza toppings give each pizza a signature taste and texture. The most love veg toppings are crispy capsicum, golden corn, juicy paneer cubes, crunchy onions, olives, and red paprika and the non-veg toppings that we can’t resist are chicken rashers, chicken keema, sausages, zesty tandoori chicken cubes add the much-needed flavours that your taste buds crave for ultimate culinary satisfaction.
Food chains like Dominos are masters in offering a range of delightful, innovative veg and non-veg pizzas, along with mouth-watering sides like garlic bread, tacos, and zingy parcels that should be on the must-try list of every foodie.
Different Crusts
The crust also plays a vital role in lending pizza a wonderful taste. The four preferred crusts are wheat thin for health-conscious people, fresh pan for the ones who like to keep it traditional, new hand-tossed for the ones who like to stay rooted to the original, and cheese burst for those who believe more cheese is less! Whether it is thin, deep, or anywhere in the between! The sort of crust you like is determined by your unique tastes and the toppings you prefer.
Condiments and Sauces
The condiments and sauces make a big difference to the taste of pizza. For example, you will notice that a fusion pizza like the Indi tandoori pizza has a generous amount of mint mayo on it, which further amplifies the desi twist on the pie. Similarly, the smoky taste on the pizza comes from the BBQ sauce used on the pie.
We hope the host of things above gives you a fair idea of how pizza gets its flavours and makes it the most loved dish worldwide.
