There are many writers who have given lists of the different kinds of cheesecakes, and as far as I can recollect, I will mention them, and what they have said. I know, too, that Callimachus, in his List of Various Books, mentions the treatises on the Art of Making Cheesecakes, written by Aegimius, and Hegesippus, and Metrobius, and also by Phætus. But I will communicate to you the names of cheesecakes which I myself have been able to find to put down, not treating you as Socrates was treated in the matter of the cheesecake which was sent to him by Alcibiades; for Xanthippe took it and trampled upon it, on which Socrates laughed, and said, “At all events you will not have any of it yourself.” (This story is related by Antipater, in the first book of his essay on Passion.) But I, as I am fond of cheesecakes, should have been very sorry to see that divine cheesecake so [p. 1029] injuriously treated. Accordingly, Plato the comic poet ren- tions cheesecakes in his play called The Poet, where he says—
Am I alone to sacrifice withoutNor 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 πλακοῦς (cheesecake); and he says that it is six stadia from Hypoplacian Thebes.1 Now, the word πλακοῦς ought to have a circumflex in the nominative case; for it is contracted from πλακόεις, as τυροῦς is from τυρόεις, and σησαμοῦς from σησαμόεις.. And it is used as a substantive, the word ἄρτος (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:—
Having a taste allow'd me of the entrails,
Without a cheesecake, without frankincense?
Happy old man, who in the sea-girt isleAnd Sopater the farce-writer, in his Suitors of Bacchis, testifies that the cheesecakes of Samos are extraordinarily good; saying,—
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.
The cheesecake-making island named Samos.
