Why Pizza And Beer Taste So Good Together According To Science
Pizza is an Italian food that comes in many varieties. It may be thick or thin crust, deep dish style, and topped with just about everything from vegetables, to meats, to seafood, and even pineapple. About 5 billion are sold worldwide every year, with the U.S. commanding the lead with 3 billion of them (some say 4 billion if you include frozen pizza). Beer is an alcoholic beverage that is usually made from water, malted grains (usually barley), hops, and yeast. Over 190 billion liters are sold annually, with the most in China. Many people find the combination of eating pizza and drinking beer a satisfying experience. Let's see if there is a scientific reason that this may be so.
While pizza is a food that many attribute to Italy, its origins are a little fuzzy. The word "pizza" was first recorded in 997 CE in Gaeta, which is a seaside resort in Lazio, Italy between Rome and Naples. It might have come from any of three sources:
- Germanic people settling in Italy and speaking Lombardic ("pizzo", meaning bite or mouthful)
- the Greek word “pitta”, which means a round, flatbread baked in an oven
- the Latin word "pinsere", meaning to press.
Flatbreads are widely cooked all over the Mediterranean countries. Sixth century BC Persian soldiers at it with dates and cheese on top. Greeks made plakous with toppings such as herbs, onion, cheese, and garlic. A Roman bread covered with cheese spreads called moretum, and fruits was called adorea or libum adoreum. Tomatoes were introduced to Italy in the 1540s by Spanish merchants selling goods from the Americas. By the late 1700s, poor people in Naples began putting tomatoes on top of their flatbreads. In 1889, Italy's Queen Margherita became tired of the gourmet French food and then ordered the most famous pizza-maker there, Raffaele Esposito, to make pizza for her. He made three types: pizza marinara with garlic, pizza Napoli with anchovies and a third with tomato sauce, mozzarella and basil leaves. The third one was her favorite, and it bears her name now.
Naples grew to be populated with many poor people, so cheap & fast meals were necessary. That area of Italy also developed higher heat ovens than northern Italy, so foods like flatbreads could be cooked faster. The higher heat also helped to evaporate water from tomatoes to avoid soggy crusts. This is essentially how pizza of today evolved.
Beer has been around much longer, several thousand years. Pottery from China and Iran showed traces from 5,000 years ago, as did a "beer jar" from 2300 BC in Egypt. There is even 13,000 year-old evidence from nomads in Israel. There, depressions called mortars were found in cave bedrock floors, and these bowl-shaped mortars had residue of barley starch from various stages of fermentation.
Early beer was more like porridge, and people often used a straw to drink only the liquid top portion when the grain settled out. During the Middle Ages (5th to 15th centuries), beer was more common than water for consumption possibly because water sources were frequently contaminated, while brewing's boiling process killed bacteria. But early beers contained less alcohol content than now, so it was acceptable even for children. It is possible that people soaked grain in water simply to soften it, and heating helped to encourage that, but it also changed the taste. Coincidentally, it may have also started a fermentation process.
Generally, beer begins by soaking, germinating, and roasting grains to release the starches and change them into sugar. This is called malting. Next, they are crushed (milled) and soaked in hot water to activate enzymes that change the materials to fermentable sugars (a wort). It is then boiled, hops are added (known sincee 822 CE) for flavoring. Finally, yeast is added to digest the sugars and convert them to alcohol and carbon dioxide. Romans called their beer "cerevisia", and the most common yeast for beer brewing is Saccharomyces cerevisiae in its honor.
Beer had been touted for medicinal and health-promoting properties over the centuries. Recently, it was learned that barley fiber and polyphenols in it can be broken down in the gut to form short-chair fatty acids (SCFA). Those are good for metabolism (regulating blood sugar) and calming an immune response (thus easing inflammation). They also strengthen the walls of the intestine as the by-product butyrate feeds colon lining cells. These effects are good only in low doses.
Pizza can be salty, fatty (with cheese and oil), and a bit acidic from the tomato sauce. The bitterness in beer comes from hops, and your body naturally responds by producing saliva to counteract the dry sensation. Saliva helps peel fat off your mouth, breaks up oily films there, and speeds swallowing and clearing of the early digestive tract. The carbonation (essentially dissolved carbon dioxide in the form of a mild acid) adds to that clearance. Your mouth is then ready for another bite.
The mild sweetness from the malt component of beer helps to counteract tomato sauce's acidity, too.
People would often say that they just like the combination of beer and pizza flavors. No special reason given. One helps the other go down better, they say.
The Sprecher Brewing Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin came up with a Mama Mia! Pizza Beer to supposedly kill two birds with one stone. This "culinary beer" was made with basil, oregano, tomato and garlic. It didn't do well, and it is no longer on the market.
Reviews were pretty average on its overall taste, citing a strong oregano and tomato sauce-like. Critic The Takeout described it as follows:
"In spite of showy displays of sniffing and swirling, the overwhelming first reaction was along the lines of, "Huh, tastes like beer." Further sipping and swishing gradually revealed subtle undertones that can only be described as "vaguely Italian-y," and subsequent burps affirmed that there was, indeed, pizza in this beer."
Another rater said "if I wanted pizza, I would eat pizza and not drink it”.
Some people advocate for drinking wine not beer with pizza. Considering that the two beverages are fermented with the same yeast, it may come down to a matter of personal preference in alcohol. Wine maker The Federalist claims, "If the sauce is red/tomato based, I'm reaching for the Federalist zinfandel," the reason being, "Its juicy berry notes, spice, and soft tannins would work so well with the acidity of the tomato sauce and the richness coming from the cheese." Wine maker Corey Garner says to avoid wines that are "overly tannic, like a young cabernet or young Nebbiolo, which might clash with the acidity of the tomato sauce, creating more of a harsh rather than harmonious vibe."
Tannins are polyphenols from grape skins, seeds, and stems, so once again this type of chemical works like the polyphenol in beer. So, the cheese fat and proteins bind to the tannins in wine before the tannins bind to saliva and get washed away.
Not all pizzas have a tomato base, and Corey Garner has this to say about choosing a different wine with "a white-sauced veggie pizza, I would go with something crisp and refreshing, The Federalist sauvignon blanc would highlight the fresh vegetable flavors while still cutting through any of the creamy, fatty cheese elements." Nicole Bean (owner and operator of Pizaro's Pizza Napoletana in Houston, Texas) makes even more specific suggestions: she advises ordering white wine with "white pizza (no tomato sauce), fish, chicken, mushrooms, leeks, arugula, and prosciutto or pesto."
But there is even more involved. Researchers Robert J. Harrington (University of Arkansas), Daniel C. Miszczak (University of Guelph), and Michael C. Ottenbacher (San Diego State University) published a paper in 2008 on "The impact of beer type, pizza spiciness and gender on match perceptions". They interviewed 34 men and women ages 20-70 for their reaction to lager, ale and stout beer with two pizzas identical (thin crust, herb tomato-based pizza sauce, and shredded pizza cheeses) except for addition of crushed red pepper.
- 90% of males said the lager was the best match for the non-spicy pizza, and 10% said it was stout. In contrast, the females said lager was the best match (54.2%), followed by ale (41.7%) and stout (4.2%).
- For the spicy pizza, the males preferred the lager and ale equally at 40% each followed by the stout at 20%. Females voted for the ale (58.3%) first, then lager (37.5%), and finally the stout (4.2%).
