New pizza napoletana logo could cook up a lotta dough

SHERRY may only come from Jerez and port from Oporto

SHERRY may only come from Jerez and port from Oporto. But is the only true pizza napoletana one made with ingredients from in and around Naples?

The question is posed by perhaps the most daring attempt yet to assert intellectual property rights.

Officials at Italy's Office of Patents and Trademarks are mulling over an application from the Naples City Council for the registration of pizza napoletana, complete with its own logo.

The application was announced this week. It is seen by Neapolitan officials as the first step towards getting EU recognition of their city's distinctive contribution to gastronomy.

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Though there is dispute about the origins of the pizza, Neapolitans trace it back to around 1660 and a now defunct local dish, the mastunicola, which involved lard, cheese and basil.

The proposed logo shows a pizza against the background of Mount Vesuvius. It would be available - and at a price, no doubt - only to those pizza-makers whose methods and recipes conformed to standards laid down by the Neapolitans.

The vast majority of cooked, topped dough sold outside Italy as pizza napoletana would fail to qualify.