After 3 years of living in Italy, I still think pineapple pizza rocks
Pineapple pizza deserves a second chance
I’m American, which means I can foment an anxiety attack over the wrong-sized coffee. My Italians friends, on the other hand, never seem to have the slightest bump in their blood pressure for even the direst problems. Decades of high-level briberies, mafia collaborations, and the solicitation of a minor? Eh, Berlusconi, my friends shrug, in that Italian way that communicates resignation, amusement and apathy all at once. Since moving to Italy, I have dedicated my non-working hours to mastering this shrug. I consider it time wisely spent.
The reason I’m telling you this is to explain that, when Italians don’t shrug it off, you need to take heed. And, of course, food is one of those select topics that cannot be shrugged away. Need proof? Read the Youtube comment section of Gordan Ramsay’s carbonara recipe, in which he takes more than a few creative licenses with the Roman classic. (My favorite comments: “Every time you call this dish a carbonara an Italian chef dies”; “[This makes] world war 2 look like a kids tea party [sic]”; “Causes of death in Italy: 10% COVID / 90% Gordon’s carbonara”). The offending video made headlines in every Italian newspaper. Many articles went so far as to condemn the entire English nation for atrocities against civilization.
As you can imagine, American reinventions likewise don’t get much love from the true Italians either. For many, the dire state of American tastes can be summarized by the mythologized pineapple on pizza. Last month, my closest friend at work leaned in and asked me, almost in a whisper, if I’d ever tried it myself, with a tone of intrigue and horror. Not only have I eaten pineapple on pizza, I replied, but I think it’s delicious. And I will defend it.
She hasn’t spoken to me since.
So here’s to the bastardized and the fusion, to the travesties and the reinventions. Let’s start with what many consider the Jeffrey Dahmer of Italo-American cuisine, pineapple on pizza:
Pineapple on pizza
There’s no question that diced pineapple canned in syrup is a mistake. Combined with hard, poorly fermented dough, tomato sauce that’s bafflingly sweet, and burnt-rubber cheese, and you have a crime against humanity.
But this has nothing to do with pineapple. If the sauce has a taste and consistency closer to ketchup, and the cheese would be more appropriately allocated as an office stress ball, then you have a garbage pizza no matter what other toppings you layer on. Put white truffle and 30-month aged Prosciutto Crudo San Daniele and it will still be a shit pizza if the base is shit.
But believe me: there’s nothing inherently blasphemous about pineapple on pizza.
Let’s look at our first counter-argument.
“Fruit doesn’t go on a pizza.”
You know what else is a fruit? A tomato. Sweet, juicy, slightly tangy, and it goes wonderfully with other fruits, with cheeses, as a jam, sun-dried in a salad…in other words, it works wonderfully in all the ways fruits do.
Maybe you’re not convinced. After all, we often use tomatoes in savory dishes. Fine.
Is a pear fruity enough for you? One of my favorite pizzas, which you can find in Italy, is pear-and-gorgonzola, often with walnuts. Sometimes in summer you’ll find fig-and-gorgonzola as well. Sweet, juicy slices of fruit on a flat disk of wood-fired dough with chunks of stinky cheese. And they’re fantastic.
You know what else would be mind-blowingly delicious with some gorgonzola and hot, chewy dough? Fresh or, even better, grilled? Pineapple. Your tastebuds are probably already begging you to make it happen.
“Okay, fine, but pineapple pizza comes with ham, too. It’s chaos. Troppa roba.”
True, pineapple pizza sometimes comes with slices of ham on top, which is crazy, right? I mean, meat with fruit? What kind of primitive culture would do something so barbaric?
In the 2nd century ACE, the Roman physician Galen considered prosciutto with melon to be the perfect combination. Proscuitto is hot and dry, and melon is cold and wet. Together they combine Transformer-style into an even more powerful entity, kicking your tastebuds with salty, sweet, fatty, and acidic all at once and forcing them to surrender to the delicious.
Come to Italy in summer, and you’ll still see disciples of the Great Doctor forking prosciutto with melon, or fresh figs stuffed with ricotta and wrapped in prosciutto (or, alternatively, dried figs with robiola (a soft, creamy cheese) wrapped in crispy pancetta). And yet no one has accused these patrons of betraying their gastronomic heritage. The trinity of fruit, cheese, and meat is undeniable.
“But pineapple isn’t Italian.”
We can all agree that this polemical ship has long left the harbor. Tomatoes, coffee, eggplant, cocoa, potatoes, corn, peppers, squash, the common bean, and many other Italian staples are not originally from Europe. But no one would dare accuse a plate of spaghetti with tomato sauce of not being Italian enough.
Conclusion: Give pineapple a chance
The culprit of bad pineapple pizza is bad pizza. If you don’t properly knead your dough and give it time to rest (in Italy, most pizzerias let the dough sit for at least 24–36 hours); if you use sweetened, uncooked sauce; and if you melt industrial “mozzarella” that feels and looks more like plastic than something from a cow, your pizza will be awful whether or not there’s a slice of pineapple on top of it.
Personally, I feel pineapple pizza should be a white pizza, meaning without tomato sauce. Otherwise, the sauce overwhelms and competes with the pineapple. I’m not against pineapple and tomato together — pineapple salsa is fantastic — but between the yeasty dough, the pungent cheese and the sweet-tangy pineapple, you have enough going on. Italian cooking is an exercise in restraint. Resist unnecessarily complicating flavors.
Pineapple pizza deserves a retrial in the court of Italian Cuisine. It’s been accused of making a bad pizza because it’s been placed on bad pizza — a classic case of guilt by association. But redemption is possible. Next time you want something different, try a white pizza with an aged parmesan, a salty feta or a nutty gruyere. And then a few slices of pineapple on top.
