CHEESECAKES. injuriously treated. Accordingly, Plato the comic poet mentions cheesecakes in his play called The Poet, where he says—
Am I alone to sacrifice without
Having a taste allow'd me of the entrails,
Without a cheesecake, without frankincense?
Nor do I forget that there is a village, which Demetrius the Scepsian, in the twelfth book of his Trojan Array, tells us bears the name of [Greek: Plakous] (cheesecake); and he says that it is six stadia from Hypoplacian Thebes.[1]
Now, the word [Greek: plakous] ought to have a circumflex in the nominative case; for it is contracted from [Greek: plakoeis], as [Greek: tyrous] is from [Greek: tyroeis], and [Greek: sêsamous] from [Greek: sêsamoeis]. And it is used as a substantive, the word [Greek: artos] (bread) being understood.
Those who have lived in the place assure us that there are capital cheesecakes to be got at Parium on the Hellespont; for it is a blunder of Alexis, when he speaks of them as coming from the island of Paros. And this is what he says in his play called Archilochus:—
Happy old man, who in the sea-girt isle
Of happy Paros dwell'st—a land which bears
Two things in high perfection; marble white,
Fit decoration for th' immortal gods,
And cheesecakes, dainty food for mortal men.
And Sopater the farce-writer, in his Suitors of Bacchis, testifies that the cheesecakes of Samos are extraordinarily good; saying,—
The cheesecake-making island named Samos.
52. Menander, in his False Hercules, speaks of cheesecakes made in a mould:—
It is not now a question about candyli,
Or all the other things which you are used
To mix together in one dish—eggs, honey,
And similago; for all these things now
Are out of place. The cook at present's making
Baked cheesecakes in a mould; and boiling groats,
To serve up after the salt-fish,—and grapes,
And forced-meat wrapp'd in fig-leaves. And the maid,
Who makes the sweetmeats and the common cheesecakes,
Is roasting joints of meat and plates of thrushes.
And Evangelus, in his Newly-married Woman, says—
A. Four tables did I mention to you of women,
And six of men; a supper, too, complete—
In no one single thing deficient;
- ↑ This was a Thebes in Asia, so called by Homer (Iliad, vi. 397), as being at the foot of a mountain called Placia, or Placos.
