Baking An Ancient Roman Cheesecake

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Cato: women be shopping

👍︎︎ 19 👤︎︎ u/kas8901 📅︎︎ May 04 2021 🗫︎ replies

Here's hoping the recipe aged better than the name!

👍︎︎ 17 👤︎︎ u/JustDebbie 📅︎︎ May 04 2021 🗫︎ replies

Waiting for Porcius Pig

👍︎︎ 12 👤︎︎ u/TheInklingsPen 📅︎︎ May 04 2021 🗫︎ replies

This is perfect timing, as I am Jewish, and there is a holiday coming up where we eat cheesecake, and the reason given for that kinda indicates that honey would be a better sweetener then sugar found in modern cream cheesecakes.

I imagine the cheese Cato used would have been close to modern Feta, or am I wrong?

👍︎︎ 9 👤︎︎ u/ShemtovL 📅︎︎ May 04 2021 🗫︎ replies

This dish reminded me of galactoboureiko (a Balkano-Turkish baked dish)!

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/panopanopano 📅︎︎ May 05 2021 🗫︎ replies

Great vid Max but I'll stick with Cheesecake factory lol

👍︎︎ 4 👤︎︎ u/[deleted] 📅︎︎ May 04 2021 🗫︎ replies

Ahha, I actually wanted to try this one - found it a few years ago - but I couldn't find the right cheese for it. Glad someone made it and taste tested on youtube.

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/anne_hollydaye 📅︎︎ May 06 2021 🗫︎ replies

Cato sounds like some politicians I've heard of

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/AngryBumbleButt 📅︎︎ May 13 2021 🗫︎ replies
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The Cheesecake Factory has almost every kind of  cheesecake imaginable,   almost. Because nowhere on their 96-page menu will you find placenta  but that's what we're making today, a layered cheesecake from ancient Rome with the unfortunate name of placenta, or plagenta, or placenta. I will be doing a rant about that later,    so stick around for that and more this time on Tasting History. It is week four of Rome month, we made it!  Sponsored by the folks over at Creative  Assembly to celebrate their release of Total War Rome Remastered, out now so take a look. And to celebrate the game's release I'm baking  a cake, sort of. See in 'De agri cultura' by Cato the Elder he gives us several recipes  for cheesecakes for lack of a better term,   and one of those cheesecakes is called placenta  depending on how you pronounce your Latin   and here comes my rant... See there are several accepted pronunciations of Latin and specific   letters and sounds in the language, and none is  more contested than the letter C. In Roman ecclesiastical or church Latin it would  be pronounced placenta. In other pronunciations   it would be placenta or placenta with a soft C  just like we say Caesar but many reconstructive   linguists believed that a C was always pronounced  as a K in old Latin so it would be placenta and   that would make Caesar, Kaiser and you will find  many people who fight over the pronunciation.   You'll probably see it in the comments section  right now and from a purely academic perspective   it is rather interesting to kind of argue and  debate which is right but when it comes to people   who stand by the fact that their version of Latin  pronunciation is the one and only true version,   I think it's a little bit silly don't you? Latin was a living and evolving language for over a thousand years just like English, and it was spoken by all walks of society over a vast empire.  In fact there are ancient Roman writings  complaining about how other ancient Romans were pronouncing their Latin.   There were probably just as many ways to pronounce Latin as there are English, and English has the added modern benefit  of TV and radio to at least somewhat standardize it. The way I pronounce English words is somewhat  different than somebody who lives in Orange county just 50 miles away    and very, very different from  someone who lives in Alabama or New Zealand, or Scotland and I bet it's extremely different  from how Henry VIII spoke it but it's all still English. So until someone finds a recording of the  Roman Senate circa 160 BC or kirka 160 BC or circa 160 BC, don't let anyone Latin pronunciation shame  you. That said the pronunciation of today's dish   actually probably was placenta because it comes  from a Greek word that is spelled with a K.   Thus endeth the rant. To make placenta: two pounds of  wheat flour for the crust, four pounds of flour,   and two pounds of the best groats for the tracta.  Soak the groats in water and when it becomes quite soft, pour into a clean bowl, drain well and knead  with your hands. When it is well-kneaded work in   the four pounds of flour gradually. This dough is  to make the tracta and spread them out in a basket to dry. When they are dry coat them with oil  then moisten the two pounds of flour, knead and form a thin lower crust. Soak 14 pounds of sheep's cheese, not sour and quite fresh in water.   Soften it changing the water three times. When the cheese  is well dried, knead it in a clean bowl by hand,   and make it as smooth as possible. Add four and a half pounds of fine honey, and mix it well with the cheese.    Place the crust on oiled bay leaves, and form the placenta.   First place down a single tracta... spread it with the mixture from the bowl, add the tracta one by one covering   each layer until you have used up all the cheese  and honey. On the top place a single tracta, and   then fold over the crust. Then put the placenta  in the oven cover with a hot crock, and surround with coals. When it is done remove and spread  with honey. This will make a half-modious cake.   So this cake was huge. Though it was meant as a  religious offering. So it's ancient Rome so you got a lot of gods to feed, but I'm cutting it down because I don't need to be buying 14 Roman pounds of cheese. So for this recipe what you'll need is:  2/3 cup or 120 grams of groats, preferably spelt or emer. 2 cups or 240 grams of wheat flour, 3/4 of a cup or 177 milliliters of water,   and one tablespoon of olive oil. That is for  the tracta. For the crust you'll need one cup   or 120 grams of flour, and a quarter cup or 59  milliliters of water. For the filling you'll need 1 and 3/4 pound or 790 grams of sheep's  cheese, you can also use cow's cheese that's fine. Just make sure it's like kind of crumbly. And 3/4 of a cup or 255 grams of honey. Plus some bay leaves with olive oil to coat them. So first let's make our tracta. Now last week I made tracta for the roast pig, and this week I'm making it very similarly but slightly differently just to you know see how it turns out. So take your groats and grind them just a bit. You want to leave them quite coarse. Then add the water and let them  soak for about a day. Last week's finer semolina just had to soak for 20 minutes these need to soak for about a day before you get them nice and mushy. Then incorporate them with the flour to make the  dough. You can add more water if necessary but   do it sparingly because you want this to be pretty  dry. Knead the dough for about 10 minutes until it's nice and smooth, then divide it into four to six pieces and roll into disks. Cato is not specific in how many layers this cake is going to be. It kind of depends on the size of your dish,   but they should be rolled out fairly thin, think  like a flour tortilla. Then lay them out to dry this can take a while especially if you're somewhere that it's humid, granted i'm in LA so mine dried overnight. In fact probably a little  too much, they were pretty hard and dry, though   not as hard as the hardtack. And then we make the crust. Now this is not a nice flaky pie crust or   like a phyllo dough which modern versions of this  cake are made with phyllo dough i'm sure they're fantastic. This is going to be very different  because it's just water and flour. So mix the flour with the water until it comes together to form a dough and don't feel that you need to use all the water. If it comes together before you've used it  all, stop. Then roll it out to be a large disk about twice as wide as you want your cake to be. It can be more or less but try to make it as big as you can because we are going to be wrapping this cake.  The last component is our filling and Cato says to   wash the cheese or rinse it in water three times  and that was because the cheese would have been   very, very salty so to get the salt out. So  depending on the cheese that you have you   might not need to do it three times. I did do it  three times because I had fairly salty cheese and   because it made it softer each time I did it and  you want this to be nice and soft. So rinse your cheese and then drain it as much as possible. Then mash it up until it's nice and smooth.   Then mix in the honey until well incorporated  and it is time to assemble our placenta.   By the way placenta as in like the thing that  a baby grows inside of was actually named after the cake. So clearly somebody saw placenta one day  and thought "Hm, that looks like cake." So line a dish with oiled bay leaves. These should help flavor the cake as well as stop it from sticking to the dish.   Then set your crust in over the leaves. Then brush  one of the tracta with oil and set it in the middle of the dish,   and then spread some cheese and  honey mixture on top. Cover that with another oiled tractor and repeat until you've used up all of the filling. Finishing with an oiled tracta on top.   Then fold over the crust to enclose the cake  as much as you can. Then cover the dish and set it in an oven at 300 degrees Fahrenheit or 150  Celsius for about 70 minutes. Now we have covered the lives of several recipe writers here on the  show but they all pale in comparison to Cato the Elder. See his father died young and Cato inherited  the family farm and so he had to learn all about   farming at a young age hence later on writing  'De Agri Cultura' which means on farming or on   agriculture but Cato lived in extraordinary times  and as the old song says how ya going to keep them down on the farm after they've seen Paris?  Though in this case it's after he's seen Hannibal. In 218 BC Hannibal Barca paraded a bunch of  elephants and carthaginians across the alps   and into Italy to make a right mess of  things. Well being a teenager coming from   military stock Marcus Porcius Cato, Cato, and  yes Porcius was his middle name or Porcus.   If anyone can find me a picture or  draw me a picture of Porky the Pig   in like ancient Roman garb I would just love that.  Share that with me on Instagram. Anyway Marcus Porcius Cato left the family farm to go fight in  the Second Punic War where he quickly rose to the   rank of military tribune under the General Quintus  Fabius Maximus Verrucosus. This poor guy was named Verrucosus to delineate him from other members  of his family and Verrucosus means wart or warty   because he had a wart on his upper lip. That's just  got to wreak havoc on a kid's self-esteem right?   Anyway he turned out all right, as did Cato  because after distinguishing himself in   the war he was befriended by the wealthy  and powerful Lucius Valerius Flaccus who   convinced Cato to move to the city of Rome and  enter politics. Cato soon became known for his austerity his traditional roman principles  and his dogged persecution of moral decay.   "He was undoubtedly a man of a rough temper and a  bitter and unbridled tongue, and absolute master   of his passions, of inflexible integrity and  indifferent alike to wealth and popularity."  Something makes me think that he was a bit  like the ancient Roman Rex Banner.   "Rex Banner. I'm running this department now." Though unlike Rex Banner who was a fan of trial by catapult Cato helped to limit cruel and unusual punishment  but unusual laws not so much. He was an avid proponent of the Lex Oppia or opien laws and these  were a set of sanctuary laws or consumption laws   put in place during the Second Punic War to  help Rome kind of bolster its depleted war chest   but they were mostly aimed toward women. How much money women could have. What they could wear. What colors. What fabrics and if they  could take carriages and at what time and where.   And after the war many thought that the laws  were no longer necessary and should be repealed   and the women of Rome took to the streets to make  their displeasure known but Cato was not persuaded.   "I should like to be told what it is that has led  these matrons to rush out into the streets in a tumult... What excuse is offered for this present  feminine insurrection? We want to gleam with purple   and gold says one of them and to ride in our  carriages on festival days and on ordinary days...   we want no limit to our spending and our extravagance.  You have often heard my complaints about the   excessive spending of the women... a plague which  has been the destruction of all great empires."   And somehow this man convinced two women to marry  him in his lifetime now the laws were repealed but   his opposition made Cato more popular than ever.  First with many, many citizens and then with his soldiers, because he re-entered military life  where he ate and worked alongside his men and   led them to a number of victories both in Spain  and Greece. And that gave him the clout to return   to the capital and begin a public indictment of  Rome's most famous and well-respected general   Scipio Africanus, the man who defeated Hannibal.  Cato believed that Scipio had become a little big for his britches and accused him of corruption  which was probably true and Scipio ended up retiring from public life. Cato was so good at persecuting the actions of others that he ended   up becoming one of the most famous censors in  Roman history. A censor was an official job title   and they were in charge of maintaining public  morality amongst other things. Truly the perfect job for dear old Cato. One thing he tried to stamp out was the growing influence of the   hellenistic culture of Greece on the Roman people. Their religion literature and language were all   becoming very popular in the Republic and he saw  that as degrading the traditional Roman values.   The men did not like change unless that change  involved limiting the wealth of women because   a few years after the Lex Oppia was repealed he  supported a set of new laws called the Lex Orchia   which did many of the same things. In addition they  limited the number of guests someone could have at   feasts and other gatherings. There were some very weird laws. But Cato's most infamous object of   scorn is epitomized in his line carthago delenda  est. 'Carthage must be destroyed'. He used to say it after every speech in the Senate whether the preceding speech had anything to do with Carthage or not.  But by this time Cato was a fairly old man  and so he could remember the Second Punic War and   the havoc that was wrought by Hannibal and  Carthage on the Roman people and he was seeing   that Carthage was becoming strong again. In one story which I actually mentioned in my video on figs one of my very first videos, Cato is upset and and frustrated with the younger Senators   and their inability to see Carthage as a threat.  They think that it's too far away to pose any real danger. "Burning with a moral hatred of Carthage...  Cato one day brought with him into the senate house a ripe fig, the produce of that country.  Showing it to the assembled Senators he said   'Know that this fig was plucked at Carthage but the  day before yesterday. That is how near the enemy is to our walls." And according to Pliny the Elder that  is what started the Third Punic War. It's probably   not true but that's what Pliny wrote, though anything that Pliny has to say especially on Cato   kind of suspect because he- I believe the term  is stanned Cato. He just loved Cato and everything that he did.   Yeah, he had a lot of influence on him. Sadly Cato never got to see the destruction of Carthage because he died before it happened,  but before he died he left us perhaps his most lasting legacy in his writings on agriculture. De Agri Cultura, it's one of the first significant   pieces of Latin prose and it had an influence  on other Roman writings for centuries including Pliny. And while there are several recipes in it  as well as lots of information on other foods and   ingredients and growing practices of the time it's  really a treatise on how to run a farm profitably as a business. Business. And it's in those sections that you get some of Cato's more blegh advice.   The most blegh being that he thinks that you  should cut the rations of slaves if they're not working hard enough, and when they get old or if  they're sick instead of taking care of them which   was the practice at the time you should just sell  them. Just get rid of them, not your problem anymore.  Not really a very nice guy from our modern  perspective but from his perspective and from   the perspective of many of his contemporaries  he embodied all of the virtues and qualities   of a traditional Roman citizen. As he wrote "When they would praise a worthy man,   their praise took the form good husband, good farmer; it is from the farming class that the bravest men, and the sturdiest soldiers come." So I suppose it's important that you know how  to farm and by extension know how to make a good placenta cake if you want to be the kind of soldier who can build an empire  like you will in Total War Rome Remastered. Once the placenta has baked for 70  minutes it should be ready to eat.   Thought if you want to darken it up a little bit just for  some color you can take the top off of the pot   and cook it for another 10 minutes. Now this  wouldn't have been an issue if i had just   heaped coals on top of it like the recipe said,  but I'm told that I'm not allowed to put coals in our oven anymore. So I just took the top off.  So after 10 minutes take it out of the oven and slather it in honey. And here we are Cato's placenta. That sounds really gross and now you know why it's better to say placenta. Slice it open to see the layers. Fairly defined.  It's actually really pretty that sheen of  the honey on top. Let's get a piece here.   Okay it does not- it does not hold together  very well. Kind of like falling apart. Let's try it. Hmm! What's not to love. It's honey and cheese. You really get the bay leaf though. The dominant flavor is definitely the honey but the bay leaf is really,  really strong in a good way. It's- it's refreshing.   It's really, really nice. The texture I can  see why they go with phyllo dough now.   And now I don't know that this is exactly  the the width of tracta that he made   but it's a little- it's a little chewy. I think  it's absorbed a lot of the oil and the honey,   and the cheese mixture and everything so  it's a little chewy. Crisp. It's crisp and  chewy, is that a thing? I don't even know. I wish  it was more like just i wish it was filo doug.   iIt's still really good though. So thank you all for sticking with me for an entire month of Roman recipes, and thank you Creative Assembly  and Total War Rome Remastered for sponsoring the   month and giving me the impetus to actually do it.  It's been a lot of fun. Also they're going to be   giving me some free game codes to to give out so  follow me on Instagram, I'm probably going to do   most of the giving there because it's easier to  follow people and everything rather than in the   comments here. So follow me on Instagram and  I will see you next time on Tasting History.
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Channel: Tasting History with Max Miller
Views: 884,376
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Keywords: tasting history, food history, max miller, ancient rome, ancient recipe, ancient roman food, ancient roman recipe, historical cooking, ancient cooking, roman recipe, roman cooking, ancient food, cato the elder, placenta, punic war, historical recipe, ancient recipes
Id: giPXpKy2lQ0
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Length: 18min 52sec (1132 seconds)
Published: Tue May 04 2021
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