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54 HoT doGs In Ten MInuTes.
Patriotic Pizza and Chips
Finns call chips “French potatoes” (also known as pommes
frites, French fries) but fried spuds didn’t originate
in France. Belgian journalist Jo Gérard asserts that chips
were first made around 1680 in Belgium. The poor inhabitants
of the Meuse Valley ate fried fish with their
meals, but when the river froze in winter they replaced
the fish with potatoes cut lengthwise into strips and
fried them in oil.
Like chips, hamburgers are often assumed to be
American food, but unlike those French potatoes, we
can trust the name. The hamburger really did originate
in Hamburg, Germany.
The pizza too has a long history. The tomato arrived
in Europe from Peru and Chile with Columbus’s second
voyage of exploration at the end of the 15th century and
was originally thought to be poisonous. By the 18th century,
the people of Naples in Italy were already filling
their flat bread with tomatoes, and pizzas took off. It is
said the pizza became such an attraction that tourists to
Naples swarmed to the poor districts to taste it.
Perhaps the best known of modern-day pizzas is the
classic Margherita. It too has a story. It was concocted in
1889 by the baker Raffaele Esposito, who created a patriotic
pie in the form of the Italian flag, in green (basil),
white (mozzarella) and red (tomato), to honour the visit
of King Umberto i and his Queen, Margherita of Savoy.
So the next time we chomp on a Margherita pizza, let us
remember the queen.
16 V I A HELSINKI
istockphoto
The first
Jamie Olivers
Our cave-dwelling forefathers probably had their own par-
ticular way of preparing food, though you could hardly de-
scribe it as cooking in today’s sense. Yet such ancient civili-
sations as Egypt and Assyria, respected cooking. The wealthy
took pride in their extravagant banquets, which were a far
cry from the morsels of the masses.
Gastronomic literature only came into existence later,
though, in Greece. The word gastronomy derives from the
Greek words gaster (stomach) and nomos (law), and means
familiarity with and expertise in the preparation of food,
as well as the ability to enjoy it. The word gastronome came
to describe an expert in cookery and a discerning lover of
good food.
While Greek gastronomy was refined and sober, gluttony
became the craze in republican Rome, whose feasts feature
vividly in countless books and films. Gastronomy took a re-
al step forward in the Renaissance, when Italy gave birth to
western cuisine, from which French cooking also drew its
influence. A royal wedding took things further when Ka-
tariina de Medici married French king Henry II, and she
brought with her to France an army of Florentine chefs. The
French word la cuisine (kitchen) began to mean both
food and its preparation.
Food cultures evolved in dif-
ferent ways in differ-