Today we’re making savillum, one of many baked desserts detailed in the recipes section of Cato’s De Agricultura, the oldest surviving piece of Latin prose, which was composed around 160 BC, though it is safe to assume its recipes had been traditional in the countryside for centuries prior. The English translation of today’s original recipe may be found in the University of Chicago’s translated version of the manuscript here: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cato/De_Agricultura/E*.htmlSeveral of these ancient Roman pastries have been called “Cato’s Cheesecake” due to their containing cheeses processed in a variety of ways, ounce for ounce, none is more cheesecake-like in its composition than savillum. Here is the recipe, in English, with the quantities I used (the original listed quantities in Roman pounds, which I had to convert to grams and then to cups):

3.5 cups “fresh cheese”

1.25 cups flour

3 eggs

6 tbsp honey, plus more for the top of the pastry

poppyseeds

My first disappointment came when I couldn’t find any whole wheat flour at Target and had to go the less-traditional white flour route. Alas. Life goes on. When it comes to the usual choices for cheese-based pastries (cream cheese vs. ricotta), I ended up going with ricotta, because its composition (just milk, whereas cream cheese is made of milk and cream) is more similar to the “fresh” cheeses available in the Roman country in Cato’s time. As the original recipe said, I baked the mixture of flour, egg, cheese, and honey, until it was thoroughly done, then took it out, covered it in more honey and poppyseeds, and cooked it for another few minutes. The original recipe recommends baking the pastry covered, but I didn’t have a cover for my casserole dish, so there’s another difference between the original and mine. The steam from covered baking might have made the savillum slightly less dense. I probably won’t ever know. Here’s how mine turned out:

I don’t think it’s that bad, but many people disagreed with me on this one. Very dense. Interesting texture. Here’s a tally of how my sample of college students felt about this one:

Number of people whose opinion was entirely positive: |||

Number of people who expressed neutral to positive opinions: |||||

Number of people who expressed neutral to negative opinions: ||||

Number of people who said it “tastes like homemade playdough”: |||

Number of people who spit it out immediately: ||

Regardless, I’m sitting here eating it for breakfast, and I don’t think it’s terrible. Not too sweet, not too flavorful, mostly just a flat, pale, doughy, dense piece of something. Vaguely edible, mildly sweet. In my opinion, not terrible. However, I’m quickly learning that others value flavor much, much more than I do. I often view food as a means to an end when others view it as art. Anyway, here are some pictures.