It seems like pizza and meat toppings have been around forever, but their origins are surprisingly modern. Pizza itself—at least the tomato-based variety—is believed to date back to 1889, when it was first made to honor Queen Margherita, consort to the king of Italy (thus, “pizza margherita”).

While Italian sausage goes back to the Old Country, pepperoni didn’t come onto the scene until the early 20th century, when it was created by Italian-American chefs.

Pepperoni—derived from the Italian word for bell peppers—is a type of salami. But pepperoni’s key difference is that the meat—pork, sometimes with beef added—is much more finely ground and mixed with spicy pepper like cayenne or paprika, yielding the distinctive red color and flavorful zing. (Some more recent versions substitute meats like turkey.) It is then air-cured or smoked, giving it a lower moisture profile than salami and many other sausages.

On the other hand, Italian sausage is more broadly defined. The kind most of us know from pizza is coarsely ground pork (and sometimes beef) with fennel, also known as “mild” Italian sausage. The “hot” variety adds spicy peppers, while “sweet” Italian sausage includes sweet basil. It can be sliced or loose, and prepared in different ways or with different spices.

If you’re like us, you don’t need a special occasion to enjoy a meat pizza. But if you’re feeling festive, consider celebrating National Pepperoni Pizza Day on Sept. 20 and National Sausage Pizza Day exactly three weeks later (Oct. 11). Many pizza joints offer special deals on those days.

Here are some fun facts while you’re waiting for that delicious pie to emerge from the oven:

• Americans eat a staggering 100 acres of pizza every day, which equates to 3 billion pizzas a year. Annual U.S. pizza sales total nearly $39 billion.
• According to a 2013 consumer survey, 41 percent of us ate pizza at least once a week, a big increase from 26 percent just two years earlier.

• The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink says the average American eats 24 pounds of pizza each year, of which two pounds is pepperoni. Do the math, and that’s more than 650 million pounds of pepperoni as of 2019. (A commonly cited but less-substantiated statistic pegs the number at about 252 million pounds.)
• One-eighth of Americans (13 percent) eat pizza on any given day, according to federal data. (Also, a typical slice is one-eighth of a pizza. Coincidence? Who knows!)
• Speaking of the federal government, in order to be legally labeled as pepperoni, the USDA requires that it have a moisture-to-protein ratio (MPR) of 1.6 to 1 or lower.

• USDA standards of identity for Italian sausage permit pork and beef, while “other unexpected ingredients can be added if the product name indicates their presence.” Red pepper is explicitly permitted by federal regulations.
• The overall U.S. sausage market is valued at $7.7 billion, of which Italian sausage is $550 million. Total U.S. pepperoni sales in 2018 topped $526 million, up 9.4 percent from 2017. By quantity, 63.5 million pounds of pepperoni was sold, an increase of 5.8 percent.
• Pepperoni leads the list of most popular pizzas, followed by sausage, mushroom and plain cheese. Bringing up the rear: You guessed it—anchovies (*shudder*).
• 60 percent of all American restaurants offer at least one item that includes sausage, according to Datassential.

• While the sausage we know as pepperoni is believed to have been created in the early 20th century, its first reference in print was in 1919, according to The New York Times. So you might say that 2019 is pepperoni’s unofficial centennial!
• The leading pepperoni brand, Hormel, has sold enough of it “to tunnel all the way through the planet Earth,” according to the same Times article.
• No matter what kind of smartphone or app you use, the pizza emoji always features pepperoni slices. OMG, it’s pepperoni FTW!
• Italian sausage tastes pretty much the same whether it’s precooked or raw before it goes onto your pizza. But precooked sausage on a pizza can be better from a food safety perspective.

So while pizza traces its lineage back to Italy, meat pizzas are a quintessentially American contribution to world cuisine. When it comes to pizza, it’s hard to “top” pepperoni and sausage!