Placenta cake - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Placenta

A Greek plăcintă-maker in Bucharest in 1880.
Type	Pie
Place of origin	Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome
Main ingredients	Flour and semolina dough, cheese, honey, bay leaves
Variations	plăcintă, palatschinke
Cookbook: Placenta   Media: Placenta

Placenta cake is a dessert from ancient Greece and Rome made of many layers of dough, mixed with cheese and honey, flavored with bay leaves, baked and then covered in honey.^[1][2] It is mentioned in the Greek poems of Archestratos and Antiphanes, as well as in the De Agri Cultura of Cato the Elder.^[2]

The Latin word placenta comes from the Greek word plakous used for thin or layered breads.^[3][4][5] The word plakous comes from the Greek word plakoeis (Ancient Greek: πλακόεις) meaning "flat".^[3][4][5][6]

The placenta cake first appears as plakous (Ancient Greek: πλακοῦς) in the ancient Greek poems of Archestratos who describes it as a dessert served with nuts and dried fruits.^[2] Antiphanes in 4th century BC describes plakous as a dessert made with wheat flour and goat's cheese.^[2]

In 160 BC, Cato the Elder wrote a recipe for placenta in his De Agri Cultura following the Greek recipe for plakous.^[2][7] Cato possibly copied the recipe from a Greek cookbook.^[2][7]

The Byzantine descendants of plakous are the plakountas tetyromenous ("cheesy placenta") and the koptoplakous (Byzantine Greek: κοπτοπλακοῦς) both of which are the ancestors of modern foods like tiropita, börek, banitsa, and baklava.^[1][8] The name placenta (Greek: πλατσέντα) is used today on the Greek island of Lesbos to describe a dessert made with thin layers of pastry and crushed nuts that is baked and then covered in honey.^{[9][10][11][12]} The Greek dessert was adopted into Armenian food as plagindi, plagunda, and pghagund all meaning "cakes of bread and honey."^[13]

• Greek food

• Bozoyan, Azat A. (2008). "Armenian Political Revival in Cilicia". In Hovannisian, Richard G.; Payaslian, Simon (eds.). Armenian Cilicia. UCLA Armenian History and Culture Series. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers. pp. 67–78. ISBN 978-1568591544.
• Dalby, Andrew (1998). Cato. On Farming (De Agricultura). A Modern Translation with Commentary. Totnes: Prospect.
• Faas, Patrick (2005). Around the Roman Table: Food and Feasting in Ancient Rome. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226233472.
• Γιαννέτσου, Βασιλεία Λούβαρη (2014). Τα Σαρακοστιανά: 50 συνταγές για τη Σαρακοστή και τις γιορτές της από τη MAMAVASSO. Georges Yannetsos.
• Goldstein, Darra, ed. (2015). The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199313396.
• Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879). A Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert (1940). A Greek-English Lexicon. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Perry, Charles (2001). "Studies in Arabic Manuscripts". In Rodinson, Maxime; Arberry, Arthur John (eds.). Medieval Arab Cookery. Totnes: Prospect Books. pp. 91–163. ISBN 0907325912.
• Salaman, Rena (1986). "The Case of the Missing Fish, or Dolmathon Prolegomena (1984)". In Davidson, Alan (ed.). Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery 1984 & 1985, Cookery: Science, Lore and Books Proceedings. London: Prospect Books Limited. pp. 184–187. ISBN 9780907325161.
• Stevenson, Angus; Waite, Maurice, eds. (2011). Concise Oxford English Dictionary: Luxury Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199601110.
• Vryonis, Speros (1971). The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-52-001597-5.

• "American Pie". American Heritage. April–May 2006. Archived from the original on 2009-07-12. Retrieved 2009-07-04. The Romans refined the recipe, developing a delicacy known as placenta, a sheet of fine flour topped with cheese and honey and flavored with bay leaves.