A Pizza Dessert

Distinct dividing lines emerge among friends the more you get to know them.  Are they cat people or dog people?  Will they download music illegally or do they respect copyrights?  And do they like pineapple on pizza or think it’s sacrilege? 

Derek says pineapple is dessert and it doesn’t belong on a pizza!  I disagree.  There’s something about the zip of the fruit with the calmness of glorious cheese mixed with the tang of the tomato sauce that just works even though everything we know about combining flavours says that it probably shouldn’t.  Throw some sort of meat on there and a handful of mushrooms and you’ve got a glorious thing.

It has now been revealed that the so-called Hawaiian pizza was invented by accident, by a London man.  In 1962 he was running an eatery in Chatham and noted that potential customers were zipping across the U.S. border to get their hands on this newfangled pizza thing.   So he started making them, without a recipe, and just experimented.  One day he tossed some pineapple on a pizza with some back bacon and it was an immediate hit. 

Back then, there weren’t even such things as pizza boxes.  He was buying cardboard in bulk  from a furniture store and cutting it in circles to support the pie!

The crazy recipe not only caught on but spread like wildfire to the extent that it’s now a pizza staple.  You could not run a pizza place without offering a version that includes pineapple – it just wouldn’t fly!  So the next time you enjoy a slice of Hawaiian pizza, give a nod of thanks to Sam Panopolous, an enterprising Greek immigrant who wasn’t afraid to risk ridicule and spread some fruit on his dish.  And remember that the original recipe also called for back bacon – so Canadian, eh?