The metaphysics of pizza

Watching foodie travel vlogs is the closest thing to a holiday we are allowed. Seeing exotic places and eating with your hands in the middle of a busy street. One can only dream! But everything is fun and games until said foodie vloggers try ‘the best pizza’ in whichever country they are in.

Up until this point, I thought if a pizza didn’t look like pizza, it wasn’t real pizza. For example, Australian fast food takeaway places tend to jam an outrageous amount of meat on an embarrassingly bready base, cover it with cheese, and call it pizza. Imagine my confusion when all the pizzas my friends ordered to share, picture me clearly gesturing that there’s more to this and I will get to it later, came in their boxes and they all looked the same. A crusty-chewy-brownish-circle drizzled in barbeque sauce because that’s the only way to get flavour.

Not respecting the architectural order is the first deadly sin of pizza.

If that pizza was a building, the roof would be hanging upside down beneath the entrance!

Also, sharing pizza? I don’t know how I feel about that. The use shouldn’t compromise the nature of the pizza but I feel like people are enjoying their loopholes too much these days so I’ll say it: if your pizza is not meant to be eaten, it’s not pizza.

Just throwing it out there before I witness any so-called pizza-life-hack where you are instructed to use pizza to achieve anything other than nutrition. Blasphemy is the second deadly sin of pizza.

The other day I saw a well-known food chain advertising a pizza hamburger but the buns were fried chicken. They dared to put 'pizza' in the name and I really do want to give them props for novelty but they should have added 'flavoured' somewhere in the ad. Pizza flavoured blasphemy.

In the past, I have been asked if tea was to be considered a soup. I see what you did there and I see your hamburger-taco-sandwich-hotdog friends hiding behind that tree so don’t try to fool me.

Does the shape define the pizza? Obviously not. An even cut of cauliflower is not an appropriate base for a pizza despite being circular, and we're all here for rectangular metre-long pizzas. Also, open souvlaki is not focaccia is not pita is not pie is not pizza. Not respecting the Aristotelian nomenclature is the third deadly sin of pizza.

Aristotle said that different names indicate different objects. It’s a rule I stand by and I am here to repeat it vigorously.

You may argue that something that’s built like pizza and that’s edible and actually called pizza could effectively be pizza. That is: a circular base of dough topped with a small number of ingredients.

That preliminary definition seems sound, but the fourth deadly sin of pizza is upon us: subverting the metaphysics of pizza.

The small number of toppings usually consists of tomato + cheese + a culturally and geographically approved combination of about three ingredients. You can have white pizzas without tomato, and pointless pizzas without cheese, if that's what your allergy level can take. You can also substitute all topping ingredients with more cheeses and that’s how I basically live my life.

Now, imagine this scenario: you walked into a party and the host just told you there’s pizza on the counter. Yum! So you approach the counter imagining a generic pizza, any pizza! But when you lift the lid you find: pineapplepizza!

The horror.

If the ingredient is not traditionally italian you will have to disclose it in the naming of the pizza. Mushroom pizza? That’s just pizza. Salami? Just pizza. These are the pizzas you were expecting on that counter. But pineapple? That's why it's called pineapplepizza.

Not pizza. Refer to third deadly sin of pizza.

What if the take-away box contained gluten-free pizza? Gluten-free pizza by label but that’s still pizza. Figure that out!

Most importantly, how far can I go with the swapping out of ingredients before what I have is not pizza anymore?

Meet Theseus’ pizza.

If I ordered four cheeses flavoured pizza, but added ten more cheeses? Yes, still a pizza.

If I ordered a margherita but instead of tomato sauce, mozzarella and basil I added saganaki, ketchup, and coriander, would it still be pizza? At this point, I’m afraid the integrity of the operation would be mortally compromised.

What if the reality of the sin is due to the fact that in the whole of Victoria there is only one brand that produces the best cheese which is sold in very few and selected stores? Sometimes a girl gotta make pizza and sometimes there's only fake cheese available in the supermarket. Is that not pizza she's making? 

Of course it's pizza. Come on! 

It's just not pizza if cheddar is the only alternative. Italians are quite flexible otherwise, I promise.

And there you have it: a journey through the four deadly sins of pizza to the metaphysics of pizza.

A metapizza, if you will.



Image: via