Ancient Roman Cheesecake

Cheesecake is one of those foods that no matter the style it never disappoints. From the creamy New York style cheesecake, to the burnt Basque cheesecake, to the souffle style cheesecake of Japan. But how do they compare to the original cheesecake? This 2000 year old ancient Roman cheesecake known as Savillum. So thank you to HelloFresh for sponsoring this video as we have dessert in ancient Rome. This time on Tasting History. Today's recipe comes from Deagricultura, or On the Subject of Agriculture by Marcus Porcius Cato or Cato, however you want to say it, was a serious man to say the least. He was not the kind of guy who you would expect to ever even see smile, let alone indulging in cake. And yet in his work on How to Run a Successful Farm, he has an entire section completely dedicated to different cakes. He even has three recipes for cheesecake, and I liken these recipes to the three bears. There's one that's a bit too simple, one that is way too complex, and then one that is just right. The very simple one known as Libum was basically just cheese and flour molded into a cake. It is a cake in the same way that like a urinal cake is a cake. So the shape of a cake and that's about it. It's not sweet, so it's not a dessert. The really complex one has the horrible name Placenta, spelled like placenta, and that's actually where many years later we would get the word placenta. And I have made it here on the channel. It's very good, has lots of layers in it. It's just a lot of work for what is essentially cheese and honey. But the third recipe known as Savillum or Savillum depending on how you want to pronounce your Latin is to me just right. Make the Savillum this way. Take a half pound of flour and two and a half pounds of cheese and mix together as for the Libum. Add a quarter pound of honey and one egg. Grease an earthenware dish with oil. When you have mixed the ingredients well pour into the dish and cover it with an earthenware lid. See that you cook it well in the middle where it is thickest. When it is cooked remove the dish. Coat with honey, sprinkle with poppy seeds, and put it back beneath the lid for a short while then remove it from the fire. Serve it in the dish with a spoon. Now when modernizing this recipe the first question that we have to ask is how much does a pound weigh? Or rather how much did a pound weigh in Cato the Elder's time? Well in 268 BC the Libra which is where we get the abbreviation LB for pound was standardized and today it would weigh 0.72 pounds or 329 grams. So instead of a half pound of flour and two and a half pounds of cheese what you will actually need is one and a quarter cup or 165 grams of whole wheat or barley flour, three and a third cup or 820 grams of cheese, and he's not specific in what kind of cheese you should use so pretty much anything will work. I'm using ricotta because it's nice and mild and it's pretty soft though actually he probably would have been using a hard cheese but you don't want a super salted cheese because that's going to just throw off the flavor. Then one egg, a quarter cup or 80 grams of honey plus some additional honey for drizzling over the cake, and some poppy seeds. The common poppy seed at the time used in desserts at least according to Pliny the Elder was the white poppy which when parched and mixed with honey used to be served up in the second course at the tables of the ancients. But he also talks about black poppy seeds so I'm going to use a mixture of both though if you are using white poppy seeds which I actually have never used until this recipe it is best to toast them in a pan for about 10 to 15 seconds. So with just a handful of ingredients our ancient Roman cheesecake shouldn't take very long to make just like the recipes that you'll make from today's sponsor HelloFresh. 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And right now you can get 10 free meals at HelloFresh.com when you use my code 10TASTINGHISTORY. It's applied across 7 boxes for new subscribers only and varies by plan. That's 10 free meals from HelloFresh when you go to HelloFresh.com and use my code 10TASTINGHISTORY. Now for our ancient Roman cheesecake it's very, very simple. All you have to do is mix your cheese with your flour until everything is well combined, then beat the egg and add it to the cheese mixture and stir. Finally mix in the quarter cup of honey. Now honey was the major sweetener for all of the people living in the ancient Mediterranean. Basically honey, grape must, dates, figs, and fresh fruit were how they got all of their desserts sweet. They did know about sugarcane. It was being grown in India and as far west as Arabia in that period but they only used it for medicine and even then it was very sparingly. Now once your honey is fully incorporated coat a dish with a little olive oil and then pour the batter in. Now the size of the dish is really up to you. About nine inches in diameter will give you a thin cheesecake but you can use a smaller dish for a deep cheesecake. Now in the original recipe it says to cover it and that's referring to something called a pestum which is essentially an ancient Roman clay Dutch oven. They would put it over a fire and then have a top on it and they would put hot coals on top of that but I don't have one of those and I'm guessing you don't either so you can use any kind of dish that has a lid. I'm going to use a tagine but you could also just use a casserole dish. Frankly if you made it without a cover at all it would still probably work because you're putting it into an oven so yeah that works as well. Either way put the entire thing in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, 175 Celsius, and bake for 45 minutes to an hour. The length that it needs to bake is really going to depend on how deep you made your cheesecake. You want it to be done enough that when you put a toothpick into the center it comes out fairly clean. At that point you can immediately drizzle honey all over the top. Now the amount is really up to you how sweet you want your cake. I went with just enough to coat the top but if you want a pool of honey by all means pool the honey. Then sprinkle the top with white and or black poppy seeds and cover the dish again then set it back in the oven for about 10 minutes, then take it out and set it on a wire rack to cool completely. Now like I said this is just one of the three cheesecakes that Cato talks about. The very simple libum which was basically just cheese and flour that one was mostly used in religious ceremonies. It could be offered up to the gods and it would be eaten afterward. Placenta was also probably used in religious ceremonies but it definitely was served on tables at grand feasts. We can see it in different menus from the period but this savillum is a little bit different because those two cakes could be served like you take the whole cake out and you give them the cake but this one is meant to be served in the dish that it is cooked in. So unless you're asking the priest to give the cake dish back which I guess you could I'm curious was it only used as a dessert, part of the seconda mensa or the final part of an ancient Roman meal. Dinner in ancient Rome would really vary depending on your social status. For the majority of people it was probably something simple like puls which is a sort of porridge but should you have the means well then it was a multi-course meal or rather a multi-table meal because at least early on the food was brought out on the table. That's why the two main courses were prima mensa and secunda mensa literally meaning first table and second table. And for much of the early history of Rome it does seem that it was just those two courses but as the Republic evolved or devolved into empire the courses had to expand. So when attending a grand feast in ancient Rome you would likely start off with the promulsis, a course of hors d'oeuvres and aperitifs which became popular at least by the reign of Tiberius, Rome's second emperor. Unlike the rest of the meal which was served on tables as you sat or rather reclined on couches the promulsis was served standing up on like a buffet table of sorts. There'd be things like oysters, mushrooms, snails, marinated vegetables, and salsamentum which are brined fish. If the gathering is a little more over the top like Trimalchio's feast which is described in Petronius's first century Satyricon well then it would be these finger foods but they would be arrayed in spectacular fashion. On the promulsis table stood a donkey made of Corinthian bronze bearing two baskets, black olives in one, green in the other. Two plates flanked the figure. The weight in silver and Trimalchio's name were engraved upon each. Sitting on little bridges which were welded to the plates were dormice dipped in honey and sprinkled with poppy seed and hot sausages on a silver grill and beneath that were damson plums and pomegranate seeds. But really the promulsis like a cocktail hour today was less about the finger foods and more about the libations. Drinks like the spiced wine conditum paradoxum which I made a few years back or the wormwood infused vermouth which I hope to make in the future would be shared from a communal drinking vessel that was passed around. Though the most common drink for the course was known as mulsum which was a drink derived from a mixture of either grape must or wine and honey. Pliny the Elder suggested that the best is that made from old wine. The honey is incorporated very easily. He says that while naturally you might think sweet wine is a better mixture with honey it's actually the more biting wine that really does the job because made with astringent wine it does not swell the stomach and it causes less flatulence, the usual drawback of mulsum. And seeing as you drink this right at the beginning of a very long meal less flatulence is probably a good thing. And another reason that it was a good thing to drink at the beginning of the meal is because it stimulates the appetite. Taken cold it relaxes the stomach and taken hot it commonly tightens it. Now seeing as it is basically a glass of sugar that you're drinking Pliny does warn that it can cause weight gain but many have reached a rather old age by eating nothing but bread and mulsum. A well-known example is Polion Romilius. He had passed his hundredth year when the divine Augustus, his guest asked him by what means he had preserved such vigor of mind and body. He answered mulsum inside, oil outside. Following the promulsis the guests would be seated or rather reclined onto the sofas and the meal would truly begin with a course known as gustatio and this was basically appetizers and it could have some overlap with the first course but it also almost always included an egg dish. This is actually where the ancient Roman phrase ab ovo usque ad mala or from eggs to apples comes from. It means from beginning to end because eggs began the meal and apples or other fruits ended the meal. It's kind of like the early 20th century phrase from soup to nuts when meals started with soup and ended with nuts. Now the egg dishes could be something as simple as just boiled eggs or even raw eggs or something more complex like a patina. There are numerous patina recipes mentioned in De Re Coquinaria attributed to the Gourmand Picius and easily the most complete cookbook that we have from ancient Rome. A patina was a sort of omelet or quiche and it was often flavored with either sweet things or more often different meats and seafood. Sometimes even jellyfish. I made the jellyfish patina a few years back and I do not recommend it though even the jellyfish patina is rather tame when compared to what was served at Trimalchio's feast. During his gustatio he had raw eggs or what looked like raw eggs hidden beneath live chickens. Friends he remarked I ordered peahen's eggs to be set under the hen but by Hercules I'm afraid they're about ready to hatch. Let us try them and see if they're still fresh enough to suck. We picked up our spoons each of which weighed not less than a half a pound and pierced the shells which were made of pastry. I broke open the shell with my hand and discovered a fine fat fig pecker embedded in a yolk seasoned with pepper. Absolutely wild. Now satyricon is a work of fiction. It is ancient but it is a work of fiction so sometimes the meal is probably a little bit more elaborate than in reality. However we also have many descriptions of actual feasts that took place in Rome and they're often just as elaborate and just as spectacular because if you had the money that was the time to show it off. Make these huge spectacular meals and you could definitely do that with the next course. The main course the prima mensa or first table. Now again if you didn't have money the prima mensa was going to be pretty simple. It might be some sort of stew or porridge or different marinated vegetables served with garum, the omnipresent fish sauce of ancient Rome, and then you could move on to maybe some sort of boiled or roasted meat with a sweet dipping sauce. But on the other end of the spectrum if you had the money then you could go with some of these spectacular dishes that you'd find in Apicius. Here it was all about the exotic meats like peacock and ostrich, parrot and flamingo. The most prized bit of the flamingo was said to be the tongue. The poet Martial wrote an epigram as a flamingo who lamented that apicures regard my tongue as tasty but what if my tongue could sing. Alas flamingos don't sing they honk. Other exotic dishes at least exotic to the modern dinner table are things like sow's womb that's been boiled or an udder of a cow that has been stuffed with sea urchins. They also had a wonderful dish of roasted sheep's testicles in broth. But from the actual menus that we have from antiquity it does seem like these kinds of dishes were more the exception and not the rule. They were there but most people weren't having them at least very often. More often the prima mensa consisted of dishes like roast sausages, boiled pork, and assorted vegetables. Though peacock does actually seem to be a rather standard fowl of the day there's even a menu from an ancient tavern that says for dinner there is chicken, fish, pork, and peacocks. One menu we have from the time actually comes in the form of a letter by Pliny the Younger who was the nephew of Pliny the Elder and he was writing it kind of tongue-in-cheek but he was writing it chastising a friend of his for not showing up to dinner. What a fellow you are. You promised to come to dinner and then fail to turn up. Well here is my magisterial sentence upon you. You must pay the money I am out of pocket to the last coin and you will find the sum is no small one. I had provided for each guest one lettuce, three snails, two eggs, spelt mixed with honey and snow. You will please reckon up the cost of the latter as amongst the most costly of all since it melts away in the dish. Olives from Baitica, cucumbers, onions, and a thousand other equally expensive dainties. You would have listened to a comedian, or a reciter, or a harp player, or perhaps to all as I am such a lavish host but you preferred to dine elsewhere where I know not off oysters, sow's womb, sea urchins, and to watch Spanish dancing girls. You have grudged possibly yourself but certainly to me a fine treat for how we should have enjoyed ourselves, how we should have laughed together. You can dine at many houses in better style than at mine but nowhere will you have a better time or such a simple and free and easy entertainment. In short give me a trial and if afterwards you do not prefer to excuse yourself to others rather than to me why then I give you leave to decline my invitations always. Farewell." Again it is in jest, it is a joke but I kind of feel like Pliny the Younger was was maybe a little bit hurt, and frankly who wouldn't be. Now one of the dishes that he mentioned in his menu of dishes was spelt mixed with honey and snow like actual snow, and this is essentially a form of sherbet or early ice cream, and it would have been part of the dessert or the secunda mensa. The tables which had once held sow's womb and flamingo tongues would be whisked away and replaced with another laden with apples, pomegranates, figs, dates, peaches, apricots, and other fruit. There would be walnuts, and almonds, and pine nuts, and pistachios, and of course different sweet cakes like the savillum. Other than perhaps more drinking, and some games, and discussion the fruit and cake course the secunda mensa signified the end of the meal. Usually because it does seem that there was a certain type of person who liked to have that at the beginning of the meal. In the letters of the statesman and Stoic philosopher Seneca he speaks of a certain type of person who liked to show off, always needing to be the center of attention, and make sure that everyone knew how much money he had. Kind of like a modern day Instagramer who's always posting pictures with private jets, and Gucci bags. In this case it would just be with fancy chariots, and nice togas I guess, but after they had spent all their money on those things Seneca says that they would spend all of their money on furniture. Too much furniture to even fit into their house. So then they would have to build a bigger house, and they would build these in town even though the house was really the size of a house that should have been out in the country. And then they adorned these houses with just too much. It became gaudy. There would be way too much imported marble on the floors, and gold along the walls. And then they turned their exquisite taste to the dinner table, attempting to court approval by novelty, reversing the customary order of dishes so that those normally served at the end of the meal are served first, and those foods which guests expect to eat at their arrival are offered as they are leaving. Can you imagine? So in that case when you arrive at the meal instead of getting eggs you are given a slice of savillum like the one that I'm about to eat, and here we are. Cato the Elder's Recipe for Savillum. Now he does say that it should be served in the dish that it's baked, but I think just I put it a little slice just so it's better to see. He does say to eat it with a spoon so that I will do. Dense, but flavorful. Sweet. It's actually quite good, but it is definitely the densest cheesecake I've ever come across. A couple bites and you're kind of done, but the flavor is wonderful. It's not as sweet obviously as a modern cheesecake, but it is sweet and if you added more honey it would be sweeter, but it is that honey sweetness rather than sugar which is probably not what most people are used to today, but it's actually really smooth. While it's dense it is nice and smooth, and I'm curious because kind of this crust got a little darkened so I'm going to just take a piece of that. I wish the whole thing was that. It's not quite as dense. It's a little bit lighter in texture, but you still get the flavor. I think that the cheese that you choose really does matter. If you want to use something that has more flavor than ricotta by all means just know that that is going to be the predominant flavor. So would I choose this over a New York style cheesecake? No, I would not, but it is good and it's really cool that even 2,000 years ago this existed. You can see that it is the early form of cheesecake. It's like a direct line. One of my very first videos was on a medieval cheesecake, and you can kind of see how it tracks throughout time. It's really cool. It's one of those dishes that has been with us for a long time, and hasn't changed all that much. So get some cheesecake whether it's ancient or modern, and I will see you next time on Tasting History.