On September 20, 1944, the New York Times published its “News of Food” column. A new dish was being offered in the United States “for Home Consumption,” the headline read. Reporter Jane Holt went on to describe this exotic new dish: pizza. It’s “a pie made from yeast dough and filled with any number of centers,” she wrote, “each one containing tomatoes.” It could even be taken home in a custom box.

Holt goes on to describe the pizza-making process to readers who likely had no idea what this entailed. After balls of dough are made, “with the dexterity of a drum major wielding a baton,” the baker “picks one up and twirls it around … the dough grows wider and wider and thinner and thinner.” The stretched dough is filled with “[cheese], mushrooms, anchovies, capers, and so on.” She describes the process of making a calzone, too.