Italiano
Mozzarella is a celebrity among cheeses: it’s versatile (it can be used in a lot of recipe), cheap, and above all, delicious.
But, let’s face it… it owes its international popularity especially to its happy marriage with one of the most popular street foods in the world: pizza.
And yet, mozzarella has a respectable history!
From early middle ages
First of all, something that not everyone knows: mozzarella itself was most likely born as a buffalo milk cheese. It wasn’t made with cow’s milk originally!
In the early Middle Ages, between wars, conquests and incursions, the buffalo made its first appearance in southern Italy, probably thanks to the Saracens, who brought it from the Middle Eastern coasts.
The buffalo found a perfect habitat in the swampy and humid areas, especially near Caserta (where buffalo mozzarella is still a typical specialty today).
There is a first written testimony that dates back to the beginning of the 12th century.
The monks of the monastery of Capua (in southern Italy, not far from Naples) used to refresh the pilgrims who went there to visit by cutting (“mozzare”, they used to say) a piece of stringy cheese paste with their fingers, accompanying it with a piece of bread.
A food that was not expensive at all, and relatively easy to process. But unfortunately easily perishable, and, therefore, with the technology of the time, it couldn’t travel for long.
For centuries it had been considered as a “second-choice product“: the cheese-mongers often preferred to conserve energy to produce seasoned and/or smoked cheeses that lasted longer (such as provola).
Cow’s milk appears
Cow’s milk arrived later, and will cause its production to leave the areas of buffalo pastures to also extend into regions where the immediately available milk was that one.
Already in the Renaissance period, mozzarella had become a fairly common dish, both in peasant homes and in the kitchens of the Vatican, as evidenced by the memoirs of Bartolomeo Scappi, personal chef of three Popes (around 1550).
Years pass, and mozzarella begins to be known and appreciated by the people.
The marriage with pizza
As stated earlier, it follows a path similar to that of another food now famous all over the world: Pizza.
They are made for each other… and in fact their destinies couldn’t help but intertwine, sooner or later.
This happened at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
And another exotic food (for the time, of course) was soon added to the union: the tomato.
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