You and I are on a mission we've traveled back in time and we've met a very important person. Let's
call him George. So he asks us "what do 21st century Americans eat?" We look at each other,
what's the obvious answer? Pizza. That's the obvious answer. You can get it any place you
can get it at a gas station you can get it delivered you can get gourmet pizza or the
simplest pizza in the world. So how can we show George what 21st century American Pizza is like?
And that's our mission we're searching for the perfect pizza.
Our time machine has landed us in 1790 and all we have with us are the clothes on our back. We have
to make do with the ingredients that we can find here in the late 18th century to make something
like a pizza. It's quite likely that George has never even heard of the term pizza but if he
has he thinks of it as an Italian dish that might have cheese and is very very much a sweet pastry.
Nowadays in America it's a completely different dish. It's savory it has this amazing crust,
it has tomato sauce, it has pepperoni, it has well whatever you want on it even
pineapple. There are certain ingredients they are not using in the time period they will not
have tomato sauce. They don't have the same kind of ground meats that we do they certainly don't
have a pizza crust like we would expect. So we've got to come up with those things.
Let's start off with the foundation of our pizza the crust. Pizza crust is a flatbread there are
not very many flatbreads that are in America in the 18th century there are things like journey
cakes sort of like a corn pancake I don't think that would make a very good pizza crust. But there
is something that George Washington would be very very familiar with and that would be fire cakes.
Soldiers in the 18th century were given a ration of flour quite often instead of bread and what
would they do with flour in the field they couldn't bake bread they had no equipment for that
so they would mix their flour with a little bit of salt a little bit of water they'd make a simple
dough and they would spread that out thin and cook it right on the coals of the fire. I am sure
George has had many a fire cake in his lifetime that's what we're going to use for our crust.
Our next problem is the sauce. We expect tomato sauce but they just did not use tomatoes in 18th
century North America. You will find a very very occasional reference but most people think that
tomatoes or love apples are actually poison and maybe that's because of the acid in the tomatoes
bringing out lead in pewter plates maybe it's just because they're part of the nightshade family,
I'm not sure the answer to that. Other cultures are using tomatoes so you will find them used in
Italy and in France and in Spain but the English and the Americans just aren't very interested in
them at all. So we can't use a tomato paste sauce for our pizza what we need though is something
that's savory that's got umami that has a you know a texture that blends all these things together.
We're going to take a classic from the 18th century mushroom ketchup. It is not thick like our
ketchup that we expect today it's very watery so we're going to have to thicken this up by adding
some flour to it to make it into a paste. This mushroom sauce has a really nice mushroomy smell
to it it's got a little saltiness it's got that sour tang which is what we want. It's very similar
to what they use as a barbecue sauce in this time period. We have to have meat for our pizza
so we're going to be using some force meat that like sausage but it's ground very very finely.
also the classic instead of pepperoni we wanted a salty meat we've got salt pork again something
that George would be very very familiar with we're gonna slice this nice and thin.
Our pizza is ready to assemble all the ingredients are here we have our crust we have a sauce we have
a couple of different meats we have vegetables also mushrooms and for cheese we're going to be
using Parmesan very popular in the 18th century. I'm feeling good about all these ingredients
except for the sauce that's the sticking point I just don't know if it's gonna work. Tomato sauce
in a pizza it brings so much flavor it brings Umami and sourness and it ties the whole pizza
together and I just don't know if this sauce is gonna make it it's it's a little too much
like gravy I don't know maybe it'll all work out and maybe the cheese will help tie it together
I don't want to disappoint George I mean we came all this way I hope this turns out well.
This pizza is perfect it doesn't need another thing.
I was really concerned about this but I can't believe how well it turned out.
The crust I'm hoping will turn out not too tough because the fire cakes can
be a little tough and that sauce that's the thing we really have to worry about.
But the smells on everything else perfect totally pizza like it's time to try this out.
We did it. You and I succeeded we created a pizza I didn't think was possible with the ingredients
we have this is wonderful flavor you'd like it today and I'm sure George is gonna like it.