Hands off my pizza!

An article in American Heritage about the history of pizza informs me that in the 1950s a fellow named Aldo Formica became a minor celebrity for his dough-tossing skills. If you put a character named Aldo Formica in a work of fiction and made him toss pizza dough, readers would balk. Too cheesy. Let Aldo Formica be a hit man or a con man or the front man for a band called Aldo and the Formicas, but for heaven's sake don't make him toss pizza dough.

The same article offers the following tasty tidbit:

...if cooks followed the advice offered by Good Housekeeping in 1951, their pizzas were biscuit rounds or English muffins topped with processed Cheddar cheese, chili sauce, salt, pepper, and salad oil. Cooks could also opt to add deviled ham, stuffed olives, or canned tuna to the "cheese treatment."

Or not, as the case may be.