Speacial* (for Special*)

The sign outside a local pizza parlor notes a new item to be had there this week: "Fish Speacial." Hmm. The oft-dreaded anchovies notwithstanding, I suppose there is something sort of unusual about fish and pizza cheek by jowl, but certainly not special enough to warrant this particular species of spelling. Curious now about fish as a pizza topping (not just an alternative menu selection), I started fishing about in Google and caught a few rather interesting notions there. When pizza was first invented in Naples around the turn of the 19th century, anchovies were a staple ingredient, according to the Modesto Bee: "They were cheap, plentiful, and could be preserved almost indefinitely in oil and salt." Today, some folks are touting the use of tuna fish too. (Don't knock it, apparently, until you've tried it.) The pizza pictured above contains crabmeat; I suppose other types of seafood, sprats, etc. might be used as well. (I'm a big fan of sardines and may give them a whirl here.) Just think of it as another way to make pizza more nutritious and fish more fun! We were served up seven cases of today's typo in OhioLINK, and 118 in WorldCat.

(Neapolitan pizza topped with crab and asparagus, dish courtesy of The Boathouse at Sunday Park, 17 February 2010, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid