Community cookbooks were most often written by middle-aged, middle-class women and so one needs to exercise some caution when looking to them to determine what was popular among the Mississippi's youth. Yet community cookbooks can demonstrate the broad acceptance of new foods. This was the case of pizza in Mississippi in the 1950s.
Perhaps inspired by the release of Dean Martin's "That's Amore" a year earlier, Evelyn Carleton Talbot of Union, Mississippi, submitted a recipe in 1954 for "pizza pies". It is possibly the earliest pizza recipe published in a Mississippi community cookbook (Woman's Society of Christian Service of the Methodist Church, 54). The recipe used two packages of oven-ready biscuits to create 4-inch diameter pizzas covered with one layer of sauce, two of cheese, and then topped with mushrooms. Evelyn was 41 and unmarried but seems to have been attuned to changing trends and pizza was gaining popularity in the state. Four years later, three additional recipes for pizza were submitted to Mississippi cookbooks: one in a Tupelo cookbook and two in Jackson cookbooks.
Interest in pizza was new in the 1950s. While Mississippi had relatively few Italian immigrants and tamales, fish sandwiches, and hamburgers filled the demand for takeout in larger towns, efforts to introduce pizza to Mississippians can be traced to the 1940s. An article from the Greenville Democratic-Times (Greenville, Mississippi) from 1948 titled "Pizza is Hit With Teen-agers," presumed the dish was unfamiliar to readers and so it included a pronunciation guide along with a recipe.[1] But Mississippians ability to purchase a pizza was increasing. Supermarkets began advertising frozen pizzas in the 1950s and syndicated columns extolled their value.[2] And as more Mississippians sought a slice, restauranteurs responded. In Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Phil's Pizza, "Hattiesburg's First Pizza House," opened in 1962 (and later opened a second location in Biloxi) followed by the first national pizza chain in Mississippi, a Pizza Hut, in 1969.[3]
If community cookbooks don't tell the whole story of Mississippians growing love of pizza, the 1950s recipes for pizza-themed dishes--pizza sandwiches, dessert pizza, and pizza hash—suggest that even if Mississippians were not making pizza at home, they had pizza on their minds. At least ten more pizza recipes appeared in Mississippi cookbooks in the 1960s.
[1] "Pizza Is Hit with Teenagers," Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Mississippi), March 4, 1948, 7.
[2] "Piggly Wiggly, 'Frozen Pizza Pies . . . Each 38c,'" Enterprise-Journal (McComb, Mississippi), August 19, 1954, 8.
[3] "Girl to Cashier," Hattiesburg American (Hattiesburg, Miss.), September 10, 1962, 7-B.