According to enduring culinary lore, the Neapolitan pizzaiolo Raffaele Esposito created a patriotic flatbread dish topped with red tomatoes, white mozzarella cheese, and green basil leaves to honor the visit of Queen Margherita of Savoy to Naples, visually mimicking the colors of the newly unified Italian flag. This symbolic act elevated a traditional, disparaged street food of the Neapolitan underclass into a highly respectable, nationalist culinary art form, initiating the modern international identity of pizza.

The elevation of this rustic peasant dish into an emblem of national pride deeply influenced late-nineteenth-century Italian regionalist poetry and folklore. It allowed regional writers to celebrate the raw, vibrant sensory life of the southern Italian streets, establishing food as an essential, high-status text for articulating geopolitical unity and cultural identity during the Risorgimento.