You may have smiled at the news a few days ago: the Italian chef Davide Tamburella was sacked by a Brisbane restaurant after refusing to put pineapple on a pizza. Never mind that Queensland grows almost all of Australia’s pineapples. Tamburella would not give way to his customers or his boss, insisting that the combination was an insult to Italian culture.

Strange as it may sound, he is not the first. In 2017, Maurizio Landi, a chef from Bologna, was sacked by a bistro near Lyon after resisting pressure to cook his pasta for longer and to serve spaghetti bolognese, a dish that does not exist in his home town. For anyone who doesn’t know, Bologna is the only city in the world where ragù is eaten solely with tagliatelle, and putting it on spaghetti borders on an outrage.

Why would Italians rather lose their jobs than question their culinary certainties? The answer lies somewhere between anthropology and history. Food fashions are changing faster than ever. There are more chefs on television than grandmothers cooking at home, and Italians can sense the dangers hanging over their beloved cuisine.

It is a bit as if Renaissance paintings were crumbling before our eyes while........

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