Saturnalia cookery: Placenta (altar cake)
The kitchen smells nice tonight. In addition to the sweet honey altar cake, I also tried the recipe for Roman-style deviled eggs again (Ofellae sine Isicia) and was much more successful the second time. I’m not sure how successful I was making placenta, but here’s a transcript of the live-tweeting over the three-plus hours it took to make a small version of the industrial-size version described by Cato in his book on agriculture (and on appeasing the gods of nature with large quantities of sweets).
Placenta • Honeyed Altar Cake
I am happy to report there’s no fermented fish sauce in the honey cake recipe. Sadly, no wine either. pic.twitter.com/dWiNkysGdC
1:00 PM – 23 Dec 2015
I have limited ingredients so reduced from 8 lbs flour in the ancient original to 2 cups. It will be a teeny cake. pic.twitter.com/i73QUngc3N
1:08 PM – 23 Dec 2015
Actually, this turned out to be a fairly large cake. I didn’t realise just how enormous the cake in the original recipe was.
Kneading tracta (stiff dough used a lot of ancient Roman recipes), getting flour all over my phone… pic.twitter.com/QTLquOduUB
1:28 PM – 23 Dec 2015
For altar cake fill, tracta spread out to dry. Just like great great great great great great great gram used to make pic.twitter.com/4miqlc0JgO
1:50 PM – 23 Dec 2015
I was able to use some of the leftover tracta in the ofellae recipe later.
And now itty bitty bit of dough for teeny tiny crust. Debating whether original recipe justifies adding dollop oil. pic.twitter.com/ikRYfljZJp
2:05 PM – 23 Dec 2015
It did. (The original recipe basically just tells you to moisten the flour.) And that bit of oil helped a lot.
pan ready for the dough, dough ready for the filling. pic.twitter.com/jdMkQOUax6
2:42 PM – 23 Dec 2015
soft goat cheese and top-quality honey for the filling. Must not waste a drop. pic.twitter.com/9Qw1irTcWy
2:49 PM – 23 Dec 2015
Ancient Roman altar cakes: a layer of tracta, a layer of honeyed cheese, a layer of tracta, and so on. pic.twitter.com/i64oYjPDTb
3:01 PM – 23 Dec 2015
not quite enough dough to wrap the cake in its girdle. I’ll just have to make a bit more. pic.twitter.com/VaKjIRNpKU
3:11 PM – 23 Dec 2015
top patched, and hoping for the best as I put it in the oven on a low heat. pic.twitter.com/fYukMplaLd
3:17 PM – 23 Dec 2015
pretty sure made layers too thick but it’s already in the oven like a jiffy-pop cake so…so be it pic.twitter.com/pjZOWqj6Lo
3:34 PM – 23 Dec 2015
I’ll dutifully check it 3 times over hour to hour-&-half baking as instructed by the venerated Cato in his farming book.
3:55 PM – 23 Dec 2015
Roman honey altar cake (Placenta) – baked for an hour. pic.twitter.com/CeeAHuJB4d
Once honey is drizzled over it, it’s ever so slightly reminiscent of baklava. Ever so slightly.
My observations: goat cheese is too sour; the layers of filling should be very thin; the bay leaves should be oiled; and Roman deities definitely had a sweet tooth.
Was the reproductive placenta named after this cake, or vice versa? They are the same shape, so it coulod go either way.
It was a cake first. It’s related to a Greek word for flat cakes. I think it doesn’t become a biological term until the late Middle Ages.
so what was the romans’ word for afterbirth?
In Greek it was ὕστερον, or (rarely?) ἀγγεῖον, or χόριον (which could also mean the caul), which led me indirectly to secundae in Latin (secundae partus).
The things we learn from cooking….
how do you like the bay leaves in sweets?
They smell delicious while the cakes are baking, but I pull them off before eating–I don’t think the Romans meant them to be eaten with sweet cakes, since cooking makes the leaves dry and bitter. They don’t make the cake too savoury, in my experience. Just a little bit spicier. And the taste really is subtly different without them. They tone down the sweet wine and honey 🙂
That cake sounds good (it would be better if I had 3 or 4 chefs on staff to cater to my whims…I have a lot of whims) FYI, I buy ‘less than beautiful’ bay leaves at an asian market, for a pittance and since they’re cheap use them all the time – soups/stews just ‘don’t taste right’ now without ’em. Beautiful bay leaves still get thrown away at the end of the cooking time, same as the cheap ones w/the broken tips.