Seasoned. Or Aged.

Writing about seasoned wood got me thinking about the Italian and English words for aging, or seasoning. Italian uses stagionato for cheeses—seasoned. A quattro stagioni pizza is a four season pizza, with olives, artichokes, mushrooms and ham. This list of toppings comes from our friend in Florence, Kyle Phillips, the Italian food editor for About.com.

Photo from The Italian Dish Blog.

On the other hand, in English, we use aged for cheese, and seasoned for wood. hah. I don’t know the correct Italian word for seasoned wood, though I am guess that it is also stagionato. I’m also not entirely clear whether the correct word is stagione (season) or stagioni (seasons). In English, we would say four season (singular) pizza, not four seasons pizza.

One last observation. The Internet is an interesting place. I clicked on one of the Google search results for “quattro stagione pizza, which took me to a Wolfgang Puck pizza recipe from The Food Network. The interesting part is that the recipe calls for Fontina and Parmesan cheese and clams as toppings, and honey and olive oil in the dough. That is just so funky.

I’m sure it’s a really nice pizza in its own way. But Quattro Stagione?