Nigeria, Nov. 7 -- Tendencies towards celebrating the false purity of recipes tilt towards the fascistic. A dictator looms behind the governing taste, in the controlling atmosphere of the kitchen, enforcing a rigid, falsified memory: ingredients pure, memories halcyon, taste sublime. Those outside that kitchen and their larder of ingredients are to be excoriated and execrated, abominated and damned. They do not have the same uniform and march differently.



Pizza, yet another mongrel pastry food concoction, is one of those falsely claimed contributions of purity to the world of eating. As with all culinary origins, it is patchy, with various cognates. Beyond the originalist dogmas spouted by the chef priests of Naples, we find the fla...