Pizza is an interesting thing. What they had in southern Italy before the war was very different and didn’t have tomato sauce, etc on it. It was a street food for peasants. There are accounts of Italian-American GIs working their way through Italy and surprised that the pizza they were used to back in America did not exist in Italy.
A lot of food we think of as being from a small place and then globalized is sort of marketing. A lot of stuff was created after WW2, associated with a country, and globalized.
Not to pick Italy but carbonara is an example of this. Invented by Italian Americans. The first accounts of it existing are in cook books published in America. Old Italians have no recollection of it pre-war.
But it was characterized as “authentic Italian” and it soon became the national dish of Rome, and modified to its current state today. Before recent times people were not killing enough pigs to make pork jowl universally accepted as the “authentic” protein in the dish.
A lot of food we think of as being from a small place and then globalized is sort of marketing. A lot of stuff was created after WW2, associated with a country, and globalized.
Not to pick Italy but carbonara is an example of this. Invented by Italian Americans. The first accounts of it existing are in cook books published in America. Old Italians have no recollection of it pre-war.
But it was characterized as “authentic Italian” and it soon became the national dish of Rome, and modified to its current state today. Before recent times people were not killing enough pigs to make pork jowl universally accepted as the “authentic” protein in the dish.