Believe it or not, cheese wasn't originally a standard ingredient on pizza. Ancient people had long been making flatbreads with various toppings, but pizza as we know it today was born in the coastal city of Naples in the early part of the 1700s. The very first variety was pizza marinara, topped only with tomato sauce, garlic, and oregano. It actually wasn't until the late 1800s that we have any record of pizza being made with cheese.

Over the past couple of centuries, pizza marinara has become anything but a relic, still highly respected and legally protected in Italy. Seriously, there's a regulatory body called the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, which dictates certain standards that a pizza has to meet to be considered true Neapolitan-style pizza. According to the association, there are only three true styles of Neapolitan pizza: marinara, Margherita, and "extra" Margherita. Marinara, by definition, includes only tomato sauce, garlic, and oregano as toppings. If you try to add cheese to a marinara pizza, you run the risk of the pizza police coming after you. (Okay, not really, but the fact that pizza styles are regulated by law should demonstrate how important Italians consider their recipes, even the humble marinara.)

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