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Comment by Lammy | Hacker News Reader

Pineapple is objectively the best pizza topping because it's one of the only toppings which makes pizza into a fully rounded scientific flavor experience. The five flavors which we can detect are sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami (savory). A basic cheese pizza covers two, maybe three of these flavors — salty, umami, and maybe sweet, depending on the sauce used. Pineapple covers three flavors — sweet, sour, and bitter (if it's fresh). This means that pineapple pizza fully features all of the five flavors.

What other topping can you say that about? Not pepperoni, nor olives, certainly not mushrooms or sausage. No other pizza topping as perfectly rounds out the flavor profile of pizza as pineapple, especially fresh pineapple, and that is why it's the superior topping.

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- "bitter (if it's fresh)"

It has a very unique bite because of this *proteolytic* enzyme it contains (when fresh),

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromelain

It's literally trying, and mostly failing, to digest your tongue.

One other very unique one is the Sichuan pepper, which is not a "spicy pepper" in the conventional, capsaicin sense, rather an idiosyncratic chemical that's... Wikipedia calls it "tingling, numbing":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sichuan_pepper

Hello,

We regret to inform you that you are henceforth and forever denied entry into the Italian Republic

Cordially,

Ministro della Giustizia

With everything going on in politics right now, the one thing that unequivocally makes me proud to be American is that we have improved pizza

We improved burritos, and sushi too. We even put sushi in a burrito and Indian food on a pizza.

You can’t stop us. We will continue to disrespect your narrow ideas of what it means to make your national dish by making it far more delicious.

You want to deny anyone entry into your food republic? Give us back the tomato. You don’t deserve it.

I hope you realised my comment was in jest lol (and I'm only partially Italian), but to get serious:

---

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away"

Sure, there are arguments against that. But when you see the manner in which American cuisine takes the opposite of that principle - especially when it comes to the creation of Italian-American cuisine - it's hardly like the laying of multiple beautiful, well-chosen instruments in an orchestra. Instead, it's a one-trick pony of: add cheese, cream and garlic. And lots of everything

Fettuccine Alfredo: Loads of butter, cream and cheese

Deep dish pizza: Tons of cheese. It's a meat/cheese pie

Carbonora: "Fixed" it by adding cream and garlic.

It's like believing you're improving an orchestra by always adding huge, loud crashing cymbals.

Trying to eat at Italian restaurants in the US as a lactose intolerant person was an exercise in frustration.

> the one thing that unequivocally makes me proud to be American is that we have improved pizza

Gosh...

You hooked me, can’t resist the recipe challenge :

Caramelized onions (sweet), sun-dried tomatoes (sour), roquette salad or kale (bitter), olives (salty), and mushrooms or tempeh (umami)

I’m hungry now

Tomatoes already have umami. I would say olive are good but could really place with anchovies or capers depending on if you favour those. They are good too. Anchovies has the advantage of packing salty and umami in one.

Now find me a place that caramelizes onions rather than sauteeing them into charred mush and calling it caramelized

For extra rounding it out, I also advocate sliced up chili pepper (jalapeno or whatever)

My go-to pizza is pineapple and jalapeno

I like: Pineapple (fruity, sweet and sour), green olives (veggie, salty) and spicy Italian sausage (savoury, spicy). It comes with the added bonus of nobody stealing a slice either!

You said veggie like it was its own flavor. Honestly it feels right to me. Is there a term for the veggie taste or is it a texture thing?

Things that taste like vegetation are often called "vegetal". Tastes like plant.

Then, while we are at it, why not put strawberries, mangoes, or bananas on pizza? Why stop at pineapples?

I also take issue with the idea that there are just five cardinal flavors. There are many, many more, which cannot be expressed in terms of these five, especially in the savory category.

Think of the flavor of meat, spices, and pepper. They are all fundamentally different, and yet would be bundled under savory in the 5-flavor scheme. The word "spicy" itself has two distinct meanings.

> I also take issue with the idea that there are just five cardinal flavors.

The five flavors model is an outdated model of what taste buds detect, a sixth has been established (oleogustus, associated with fatty acids and particularly with rancidity.) Furthermore, while not technically “tastes” in the detected-by-tastebuds sende, unctuousness (the mouthfeel of fats) and spiciness (detected by pain receptors instead of tastebuds) are part of what most people mean when they talk about “taste”.

The point of your sense of taste is to get you to eat the things you need. Your tongue must be able to detect whatever those things are.

Some such substances occur across a broad range of foods, or in varieties that differ from each other in ways that don't really matter to your digestive system, and you can pick them up and consider them to be a flavor common to those foods.

Some are unique. You can pick those up too.

In either case, your perception of the same taste will vary according to the current state of your nutrition. Steven Callahan noted that, when he was lost at sea and food was scarce, fish eyes tasted significantly better than the rest of the fish. That is because they contain important nutrients, which your tongue can detect, but which you don't ordinarily care about. You start to care as you develop deficiencies.

A model of a small number of "basic flavors" doesn't even allow for this phenomenon to exist. It is fundamentally misguided.

Who says I want all five flavors? Most dishes I eat and like don't have all of them.

In my opinion - I think pineapple compliments every individual component of pizza. The acidity of the fruit cuts through the grease in the cheese and compliments the savory flavor like a wine platter. It goes excellent with a good sauce, and can elevate a can of store-bought marinara with a sort of tropical pico-de-gallo elegance. The bread tastes relatively inert and doesn't interfere with the whole thing.

If I just want a savory pizza, I'll probably lean more towards a pepperoni slice. But a Hawaiian option from a place that serves actually good pizza will tempt me on a regular basis. The ham is where they get you, it's typically a bigger issue than the pineapple at most places.

I've never thought as deeply about my love for pineapple on pizza as you have. Maybe I should grill some young pineapple and throw it on my next pie for that caramelized, charred flavour.

You don't have to have all of them at once, but there's no reason to arbitrarily limit a color from the canvas of pizza.

It's also great because most people won't even try it and I can just have the whole pie...

I eat it with hot peppers and blue cheese. The sweet/spicy combo is fantastic and the blue cheese brings a fantastic complexity to the mix.

I prefer barbequeued pineapple on a pizza, with mint and salt.

Pineapple on pizza is in the same category as steak-doneness and IPAs. It's not about the food itself, but the social signaling of supposedly good taste.

I agree, and I assume Matt is making a naughty & nice list of who disses this ultimate culinary advancement, so that he can sue them later.

is this because he prefers cheese pizza?

Tomato sauce is sour as is mozzarella cheese. The crust should also provide bitter notes, particularly if it has a decent char. There are loads of other topping that provide these notes but stronger, with a more congruous flavor profile to pizza; olives, balsamic vinegar, pickled artichokes and peppers, etc.

Unexpectedly best combination I've found: pineapple and *cinnamon*, on a mildly spicy tomato sauce.

Unrelated, but you might be openminded enough to enjoy the bizarre but oddly harmonious combination of banana and dill pickle. I was getting my electrolytes balanced impatiently and discovered that they're inexplicably complementary.

This is why spicy honey is a great addition to pizza, esp. peperoni.

I wanted a checkbox for Anchoives and Olives. How do I justify that as the superior topping?

> The five flavors which we can detect are sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami (savory).

This is nonsense. Your tongue is far more sensitive than that.

How would you characterize the flavor of butter?

GOOD point https://www.sciencenews.org/article/five-basic-tastes-have-s...

Exactly, couldn't agree more. See my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42433881

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