Pizza Margherita may be fit for a queen, but was it really named after one?

Cooking up a myth

Was the pizza Margherita a savvy piece of culinary diplomacy crafted by royal officials? Having the royal family sample the food of the people would be a way to win over hearts and minds. Traditionally, the origin story has been interpreted that way. According to recent research, however, the story is not only just that, a story, but one based on forgery.

Food historians have found several key holes in the account. Probably the most damning is that the dish existed at least three decades before any royal visit to Naples. In an 1853 collection of essays about Neapolitan customs, author Emanuele Rocco describes a pizza topped with “basilico, muzzarella, e pomodoro”: basil, mozzarella, and tomatoes.

(Why are these foods named after places?)

Changing cuisines

Margherita of Savoy (1851-1926), the consort of King Umberto I of Italy, is photographed here in the late 19th century.

Print collector/Album

Queen Margherita may never have eaten her namesake pizza in Naples, as attitudes toward the dish were somewhat negative. Journalist Matilde Serao’s late 19th-century book The Belly of Naples described pizza at that time as extremely cheap fare that “turns yellow in the sun, eaten by the flies.” The centrality of tomatoes to pizza also explains why many Europeans initially found pizza unpalatable: A member of the nightshade family of plants, the fruit was associated with poison. In the course of the 1900s, Europeans overcame their prejudices, clearing the way for Neapolitan cuisine to conquer the world.

Local records reveal no contemporary reference to the Esposito pizzeria incident. The Gazette of the Kingdom of Italy, which published royal news, has no mention of the queen’s visit or Galli’s letter to Esposito. Samples of Galli’s handwriting have been compared to the signature of the letter sent to Esposito; they do not match. 

So if Galli did not write the letter on behalf of the queen, who did? A possible clue lies in the name of the letter’s recipient: Raffaele Esposito Brandi. The inclusion of this second surname is odd. Raffaele Esposito’s wife, Maria Giovanna, had the maiden name of Brandi. Traditionally, European men do not take their wives’ last names, so Esposito would not have used Brandi. There were, however, two people linked to the pizzeria who would have: Giovanni and Pasquale Brandi, Maria’s nephews who took over the pizzeria in 1932.