Pizza
1903
Pizza. If there's a better food out there, I sure haven't discovered it yet.
Pizza had its FirstMention on December 6, 1903, in New York, of course. And no, it wasn't from Ray's Pizzeria (the real one, on Seventh Avenue). It appeared in the New York Tribune, in a wonderful and lengthy article on Italian food, Little Italy, and the immigrant population in lower Manhattan.
You can see by the title of the article that it wonders aloud about the influence of food on the temperment of the people eating it. It even contains this lovely and pretty familiar phrase, perhaps also a FirstMention of its own...
If it's true that you are what you eat...then I must be an anchovy pizza!
By the way, the venerable Oxford English Dictionary has cites for pizza that date back to the 16th century, so my 1903 find can hardly be deemed the very first FirstMention, but it does get dibs as pretty much the first appearance in the US...doesn't it?
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Our FirstMention research is carried out in many sources, including historical newspaper archives, online family history records, state archives, and old books.
Know of an earlier FirstMention? Drop us a line at david@firstmention.com