History Of Mozzarella

The History of Mozzarella is much like most Italian Food History. Nobody really knows for sure where is came from but you can bet that it's delicious. I don't think anybody kept track because they were too busy eating the food.

Mozzare means to cut off. I can think of a couple of reasons why they would call this ball shaped cheese mozzarella. If it is in fact named after that particular Italian verb, but I'm not going to go into the gory details.

Some say that cheese curds accidentally fell into a pail of hot water in a cheese factory in Naples and the cheese formed into a ball and fantastico, the mozzarella was born. Many culinary masterpieces and creations have derived from accidents so this may be the case as well.

There is documentation of this delectable cheese in a cookbook from 1570 from Bartolomeo Scappi who was the cook of the papal court. But in the turn of the century the cheese, much like the production of pasta was very popular and was mostly found in the Southern regions in Italy, Campania taking the lead.

And in 1889 it was documented as used in creating a pizza in Naples that consisted of tomato and basil.

Here are the facts as we know them.

Bufalo are not native to Italy and similar to the invention of pasta it was a cumulative effort of many cultures infused with time. You can see it in the eyes and faces of the people in the South of Italy as this region of the world which has been dominated by so many counties. You see and taste the flavors of the Greeks, Arabs the Spaniards to name a few.

It's as if Italy took the best of all cultures, added it's own color, flavor and cooking style, claimed it as it's own and called it cucina Italiana!