Perhaps Aegimus wrote a book about cheesecake because he was concerned with the diet of Olympic athletes-they were fed cheesecake and then won the games. The ancient Romans were also familiar with cheesecake. This is evidenced, for example, by Cato the Elder’s work “De Agri Cultura,” which contains recipes for three cakes for religious purposes: librum, savillum, and placenta. Of these three cakes, the placenta most closely resembles a cheesecake. It is a pie consisting of several layers of dough layered with a mixture of cheese and honey, flavored with bay leaves, then baked and topped with honey.
This dessert is also mentioned in the Greek poems of Archestratos and Antiphanes. Archestratos describes placenta (from the Greek plakous) as a dessert served with nuts and dried fruit, praising the honey-soaked Athenian version of plakous.
Antiphanes, on the other hand, left a description of plakous made of wheat flour and goat cheese.
