Kebab pizza

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Kebab pizza
Familjepizza med kebab i Hillerstorp 4493.jpg
Family-sized kebab pizza from Pizzeria La Bella in Hillerstorp.
TypePizza
CourseMain
Place of origin Sweden
Created byUnknown
Invented1980s
Serving temperatureHot

Kebab pizza (Swedish : kebabpizza) is a Swedish style of pizza topped with kebab meat and other ingredients, the precise topping often varying between restaurants. A combination of Italian and Turkish cuisine, the kebab pizza was created by Middle Eastern immigrants in the 1980s. Since its creation, the kebab pizza has increased in popularity and is today one of Sweden's most popular pizzas, and one of the most popular fast food dishes overall. Due to its popularity the dish has reached a position of cultural prominence in Sweden as well as all over Scandinavia, sometimes being invoked in popular culture and politics.

Contents

Origin and history

The kebab pizza was invented in Sweden and combines Italian and Turkish cuisine. [1] [2] [3] The first pizzeria in Sweden opened in Västerås in 1947, following the arrival of 300 guest workers from Italy to the city. Further pizzerias were founded in the 1960s, and pizza gradually became the most common fast food in the country. [1] After the first wave of Italian immigration into Sweden, few Italians moved to the country with the ambition to make pizzas. [4] Pizzerias in Sweden are today instead predominantly run by immigrants from the Middle East and the Balkans who were unable to find work within the fields they had been educated in their home countries and thus adopted pizza-making as a first business. [4] [5] In the 1980s, kebab and falafel restaurants began to crop up throughout Sweden and in many smaller towns it was common for restaurants to offer both pizza and kebab. The kebab pizza originated at some point during this time, though the original creator and precise time is unknown. [4]

According to the Swedish food company Schysst käk, the kebab pizza can be traced back to 1982. [6] Unlike many other influential dishes, no pizzeria in Sweden has made the claim to be the point of origin of the kebab pizza. The earliest known record of a kebab pizza in the menu collections of the National Library of Sweden dates to 1986 and is from Pizza Dali at Höglandstorget  [ sv ] in Bromma. [4] Pizza Dali called their pizza the "shish kebab-pizza" and it included tomatoes, cheese, onions, bell peppers, and beef tenderloin. The next earliest record is from 1988 at Pizzeria Amigo in Eksjö, where the pizza was topped with cheese, tomatoes, kebab meat, onions, champignons, friggitelli, and Béarnaise sauce. [4]

Varieties

Kebab pizza from Gothenburg. Pizzakebab Goteborg.jpg
Kebab pizza from Gothenburg.

Kebab pizzas can vary greatly from restaurant to restaurant. They are typically topped with kebab meat, onions, friggitelli and sauce. [1] [4] [7] The kebab meat is typically beef but is sometimes substituted for chicken. [8] The sauce used, called kebab sauce (kebabsås) in Sweden, is most often a mixture of yogurt or sour cream and various spices. [1] The most significant difference between kebab pizzas from different pizzerias is whether the common sides to kebab (such as french fries and lettuce) are also added to the pizza. [4]

Some pizzerias also serve a "Viking kebab pizza", a kebab pizza that has been folded to resemble the shape of a Viking ship. [1] [9] In 2021, the Sweden men's national football team developed the "football pizza" (fotbollspizza), a variation of kebab pizza with kebab, mozzarella cheese, tomato sauce, garlic sauce, herbs, champignons, onions, chili pepper, and pizza salad  [ sv ]. [10] Vegan kebab pizzas may substitute the kebab meat for seitan [11] or soy kebab. [8]

International spread

Kebab pizza from Kotipizza in Finland Kebab Pizza (2697337901).jpg
Kebab pizza from Kotipizza in Finland

Although the kebab pizza remains most prolific in Sweden, it has also spread internationally, even to Italy. [4] The exact ingredients used as topping vary between countries. It is, for instance, common for the toppings of kebab pizzas in Norway to include maize [4] and for Danish and Finnish kebab pizzas to include garlic. [12] Kebab pizzas in the United Kingdom typically use lamb meat. [4]

Pizzerias serving Swedish-style pizzas and kebab restaurants have also spread the kebab pizza, with few differences from the Swedish original, even further internationally to countries such as the United States, [5] [13] Spain, [14] Australia, [15] and Malta. [12] Pizza Karma, a restaurant in Minneapolis, Minnesota, opened in 2018, serves chicken kebab pizzas inspired by Indian cuisine. [16] [17]

In 2020, British Domino's Pizza restaurants began to offer kebab pizzas in the form of the "beef doner pizza", [18] though it was only available for a limited time. [19] Domino's also serve chicken kebab pizzas with garlic sauce in France and in the Netherlands. [20] Pizza Hut has, with reportedly mixed results, experimented with kebab pizzas in Pakistan in an attempt to appeal to the local market, introducing products such as the "bihari kabob pizza" with meat infused with masala and mustard oil. [21] Frozen kebab pizzas have also begun being sold internationally, including by the British supermarket Iceland. [22]

Though the two dishes are unrelated, the Swedish author Jenny Damberg  [ sv ] has compared the kebab pizza to the Middle Eastern lahmacun, a type of flatbread sometimes topped with kebab meat. [4]

Culture

Pizzas of different types sold in Sweden in 2018 [23]
  1. Kebab pizza (19.7%)
  2. Vesuvio (15.9%)
  3. Hawaiian (11.3%)
  4. Capricciosa (9.80%)
  5. Margherita (7.83%)
  6. Calzone (7.30%)
  7. Chicken (3.55%)
  8. Funghi (2.29%)
  9. Bussola (1.89%)
  10. Gyros (1.66%)
  11. Other (18.8%)

See also

References

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