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Pizza is the number one staple food that Party must order. Although what you get is takeout, the moment you open the lid, the smell of baked wheat and cheese milk floats out with a hot air, which can still bring a strong sense of happiness. What breaks the defense is not only the drool in the corner of the mouth, but also the pizza box that finally gets the job done.

(photo source: Giphy) although we ignore it every time, and even get rid of the big lid that gets in the way and is torn apart, the pizza box is the biggest contributor to making pizza so delicious in our hands.

The pizza box must first be strong so that many stacks will not collapse; another important task is to keep warm, the cool pizza crust is not so soft and crisp, and the cheese is not so soft and slippery, oozing grease and condensing into a lump.

(photo source: Pixabay) however, while keeping the temperature inside the box, the hot air will condense into a lot of small water droplets, making the pizza soft. So well-designed pizza boxes have to solve the problem of heat insulation and excess water discharge.

In order to eat more delicious pizza, corrugated boxes have become people's first choice. Let's take a look at a video to learn more about it.

Why are so many pizza boxes made of corrugated paper? The earliest pizza boxes were available in the 19th century, and pizza makers in Naples used multi-layer metal boxes to hold pizzas.

This kind of box is called "Stufa" and looks a bit like our steamer. This copper container is easy to keep warm and has a small window on the lid to breathe. It can be said to be beautifully designed (photo source: reference [3]). After World War II, soldiers returning to the United States from Europe were obsessed with pizza, and pizza became more and more popular in the United States, so disposable pizza boxes appeared. At first, people tried to put the pizza in a paper bag. Although it was breathable and solved the problem of wetness, it was already cold and had to be hot before eating it.

With more and more takeout orders, merchants need to put a lot of pizzas together, and paper bags can't support and protect them at all, so people use single-layer cartons to hold pizzas. However, the pizza box is not strong enough and will collapse because it absorbs too much water, affecting the taste.

Single layer carton vs. Corrugated board box (photo: Serious Eats) the first patent for a pizza box made of corrugated board was filed in 1963, and it is almost what we see today.

A box made of corrugated board has many advantages: it does not require tape or staple sealing when folded; it has strong support; it is more thermal than a cardboard box; and it is more breathable than a plastic box. Even today, pizza takeout boxes made of corrugated board still dominate.

(photo Source: reference [5]) corrugated board for pizza boxes is usually a layer of paper on each side, sandwiched with wavy paper. The thickness of corrugated board depends on the wave height of the middle corrugated paper, which can be divided into A corrugated, B corrugated, C corrugated, E corrugated and other corrugated types according to the corrugated paper size.

(photo Source: reference [5]) this thickened inner core structure allows the air to stay inside the corrugated board for longer, making it less prone to cold and heat exchange, like the down jacket of pizza. Compared with the single-layer cardboard box, it can be kept warm for longer.

B corrugated and E-corrugated cardboard are commonly used to make pizza boxes, each of which has its own advantages. B corrugated board is slightly thicker and is not easy to collapse under the action of water vapor, and some people will think that using thicker cardboard to make a pizza box will look more advanced; E-corrugated board has more available space inside the pizza box, because it is thinner. It is also convenient to print high-quality pictures on the surface.

Sometimes merchants will choose which corrugated box to use according to the size of the pizza, 14-16-inch large pizza made of B-corrugated paper box, 10-12-inch pizza using E-corrugated box.

In order to keep the pizza warm and dry, there are generally two kinds of common boxes made of corrugated cardboard, one is unfolded and the other is a regular rectangle.

The "zilangba" pizza box (left) and the "rules" pizza box (right) (photo source: reference [7]) the first box used by Domino was like this on the left, and later they adopted a box with a corner design. it reduces the time to fold a box from 6 seconds to 4 seconds.

After the cardboard in front of the box is folded on the right, it can be inserted into the two small openings at the bottom and locked firmly. This is the most widely used pizza box, which is chosen by Pizza Hut, Bang John and many other pizzeria.

However, the two kinds of boxes are only moderate in terms of heat preservation and water vapor discharge, and pizza merchants show their own talents on the boxes in order to enable customers to eat more fresh and delicious pizza.

Some pizzas are coated with aluminum inside the box to reflect the heat and make 17 holes in the box, so that even if several boxes are stacked together, the steam in each box can be released. Aluminum coating also prevents water vapor from soaking the carton, so it doesn't smell like a rotten paper shell and doesn't have to worry about pizza kebabs.

Eataly's pizza box (photo: Scott Wiener) No one may have a better say than Scott Wiener about which pizza box is the most cleverly designed. He is an expert on pizza boxes, and in 2020 he collected more than 1500 pizza boxes (most of which are unused). He thinks the best pizza box is the VENTiT box.

VENTiT pizza box (photo source: Scott Wiener) traditional corrugated board is mostly two layers of paper and a layer of inner core glued together, and then printing, die-cutting, folding and other steps, and finally into a pizza box.

(photo Source: Eater) in the design of the VENTiT box, in order to better heat preservation and dehumidification, the die-cutting parts of the three layers of corrugated board are different, so the process is reversed when making the box, first cutting the three layers of corrugated board separately, and then gluing them together.

These asymmetrical openings allow steam to spill from the upper and lower sides, keeping the pizza dry and hot, effectively reducing humidity while prolonging heat preservation.

VENTiT pizza box vs. Traditional pizza box (photo source: ventitboxes) not only square box pizza is round, why use square box to hold it? The choice of square box is more due to the consideration of production cost, labor cost and delivery convenience. The pizza box hasn't changed much since World War II, but it obviously has a lot of room to improve.

Apple has applied for a patent for a round pizza box, which is made of recycled materials. its innovation is that there are eight air holes in the lid through which water vapor can be discharged, and there is a raised concentric ring at the bottom of the box, which can hold up the pizza and have a gap with the bottom of the box to prevent the crust from getting wet on the way back to work. At the same time, it can also play a certain role of heat preservation.

(photo Source: reference [10]) Pizza Hut also designed a round pizza box, which was also designed for customers to receive hotter, more crispy pizza. They designed bulges and grooves at the bottom of the pizza box to hold the pizza up and collect spilled pepper or soup.

In addition to the round pizza box, there are many other designs, such as a triangular pizza box that can hold only one tooth of pizza; after eating pizza, the box can be torn apart along the dotted line and reassembled into a coffin-shaped box to hold the residue.

After taking the box apart, it can be folded into a coffin for food scraps (photo source: Scott Wiener) Resources:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_box

[2] https://www.seriouseats.com/a-brief-history-of-the-pizza-box

[3] https://pizzanapoletanismo.wordpress.com/tag/stufa/

[4] https://www.wired.com/2014/01/huh-the-best-designed-pizza-box-is-from-india/

[5] https://web.archive.org/web/20120819160624/http://www.correllconcepts.com/Pizza_Packaging/structural%20_options.htm

[6] https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%93%A6%E6%A5%9E%E7%BA%B8/3587327

[7] https://web.archive.org/web/20120825231309/http://www.correllconcepts.com/Pizza_Packaging/history.htm

[8] https://web.archive.org/web/20120903034357/http://www.correllconcepts.com/Pizza_Packaging/traditional_box_downside.htm

[9] https://nypost.com/2020/02/05/mans-record-setting-pizza-box-collection-mustve-cost-him-a-lot-of-dough/

[10] https://patents.google.com/patent/US20120024859

[11] https://www.foodandwine.com/news/pizza-hut-round-boxes

[12] https://slate.com/technology/2013/12/an-evolution-of-innovative-technologically-advanced-pizza-boxes.html

This article is from the official Wechat account: bring Science Home (ID:steamforkids), author: everything.

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