Margherita Pizza

Pizza Margherita is the benchmark of Neapolitan pizza: a thin, soft base topped with little more than San Marzano tomato, fresh fior di latte or buffalo mozzarella, basil and a thread of olive oil. Baked for around 90 seconds in a screaming wood-fired oven, the rim (cornicione) puffs up and chars into leopard spots.

Its beauty is restraint — three ingredients, top quality, and an oven hot enough to make them sing.

By tradition the Margherita was created in Naples in 1889, when pizzaiolo Raffaele Esposito made a pizza for Queen Margherita of Savoy in the colours of the Italian flag — red tomato, white mozzarella and green basil. The patriotic story is debated by historians, but the name stuck.

Naples is the dish's guardian: "Pizza Napoletana" holds EU protected status and UNESCO recognised the art of the Neapolitan pizzaiuolo as intangible cultural heritage in 2017. From those humble origins, pizza has become perhaps the world's most popular dish.