In the episode on Jewish Food in Rome I made much of the fact that many Jewish Roman dishes are found in restaurants across Rome and beyond. Not just carciofi alla giudia but others that are probably not recognised as Jewish, like cicoria ripassata and aliciotti con l’invidia. By contrast, one that has stayed in the former Ghetto, and indeed at a single location as far as I know, is pizza ebraica.

A slice of Jewish pizza is a chunky bar about 10cm long that is a dense confection of almonds and pine nuts with dried and candied fruit and raisins, baked very dark and crunchy. It is sold by the kosher bakery Boccione, which these days generally has a line out the door. A little goes a long way.

Sweet “pizza” is not an historic abomination, unlike the Nutella-topped creations across the river in Trastevere. Bartolomeo Scappi has recipes in his 16th century treatise, and the word pizza can encompass all sorts of dishes. Pizza ebraica is more formally known as pizza di beridde, traditionally baked to celebrate the bris, or circumcision, of a baby Jewish boy. Beridde is the Roman Jewish dialect for bris.

Boccione, despite being tiny, is unmissable even if there isn’t a line to point the way. It is on the corner as you enter the main street, via del Portico Ottavia, at the far end from the synagogue. And, unsurprisingly, the building has been there a long time, longer even than the 200 years that the bakery has been there.

I was looking at a 1752 engraving by Giuseppe Vasi of the Piazza Giudia, which shows the Ghetto gate to the right, and my own photograph of Boccione, taken on a recent “research” visit. It’s a little tricky to get oriented, because the big fountain is no longer there, having been moved about 50 metres closer to the river in 1930 by order of Pope Pius XI. On the left of the engraving, though, is that distinctive chopped-off corner of the building and the number 3 and a Latin inscription. The words on the engraving look slightly different, but we all know artists edit what they see while the camera, of course, never lies.

So there it is, the forno del Ghetto, unique source of the stunningly good Jewish pizza. You can of course make it yourself, and dubious reverse-engineered recipes can be found online, but seriously, you owe it to yourself to buy a slice of the genuine article.

Today is the International Day of Biological Diversity. As it happens, Eat This Podcast today published an episode that raises a question I have seldom seen given any serious discussion. Are rare breeds important for the conservation of genetic diversity?

Like all headline questions, the answer is probably “No”. Let me explain.

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One of the nicest things about publishing our recent paper What is Wrong with Biofortification is that it prompted several people to share results and opinions that support our conclusions. Confirmation bias aside, we have not yet had any substantive pushback. This piece was prompted by one of the responses we received.

See those beans? They are “iron-rich”. Why the “scare quotes”? Lots of reasons, some trivial, some much less so.

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Helena Bottemiller Evich had a story in her newsletter last week that left me open mouthed. Whatever bad things you think Big Food might be capable of, this is worse.

An allergic reaction to sesame can be fatal, and sesame is currently the 9th most common allergen in the US. Unlike allergens 1–8, until a couple of years ago the law did not require sesame to be disclosed or labelled. In 2021, however, Democrats and Republicans overcame their mutual allergic reactions to pass a bill requiring sesame to be disclosed. So what did food manufacturers do?

They added sesame to products that had not previously contained sesame.

Apparently, adding a touch of sesame overcomes two little difficulties. First, it means manufacturers don’t have to go to the trouble of decontaminating their lines of sesame (which they somehow are able to do for the other allergens on the compulsory disclosure list). More to the point, it means they can legitimately say that their product does contain sesame, which they are not allowed to do if it might not contain sesame.

Forgive me, but this is absolute madness. I accept it is an unintended consequence, because, I mean, who in their right mind could have intended such a consequence? I hope someone tracks down the currently unsung genius who first came up with this dodge.

By the way, here in Europe (and, apparently in Canada) sesame has to be disclosed, and is, without any great fuss (though there are appalling cases where very bad things have happened because products did contain undisclosed sesame).

People (well, a person, but still) asked about the incidental music in my recent episode on Mothers and Milk. It is my interpretation of one of the Child ballads, No. 40, The Queen of Elfan’s Nourice. How we got there is a bit of a roundabout story.

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