Tragema of offering — the share of the gods and the symposion
Plakous with Honey and Fresh Cheese
OfferingReconstruction🍯moyen50 min
A cake of thin stacked pastry leaves, filled with fresh cheese beaten with honey, all drizzled while still warm with fragrant honey. A sweetness of altars and banquets, a distant ancestor of Mediterranean honey cakes.
Why this dish? Before fleeing Crete, a pious man thanks the gods; and Daedalus, who has so offended Minos, knows the price of an offering. The honey plakous, a cake placed on altars and shared at the symposion, is inspired by the sweet flatbreads that Greeks presented to the gods to win their favor — a gesture, never a reproduction of a sacred rite.
When you have angered a king and perhaps the gods, young man, you do not arrive empty-handed before the altar. With my craftsman's fingers I spread sheets of dough as thin as the wax of my wings, I stack them with fresh cheese worked into Hymettus honey. The first portion is set aside for the Immortal, and the rest we keep for the evening cup. Believe a man who has dared too much: a little sweetness offered is better than a pride unshared.
Ingredients
- •Wheat flour — as needed for the leaves (dough)
- •Fresh ewe's milk cheese — a good portion (filling)
- •Hymettus honey — generously (sweetness and binder)
- •Olive oil — for the leaves (fat)
- •Sesame seeds — a handful (finish)
How it was made : Plakous (from plax, 'flat surface') was a cake of layered sheets with cheese and honey, a common ancestor of many Mediterranean pastries. It was offered to the gods and shared at the symposion; Athenaeus cites numerous regional variants.
Sources : Athenaeus of Naucratis, Deipnosophistae, Book XIV (cakes and plakountes) · Andrew Dalby, Food in the Ancient World from A to Z, 2003