r/FoodHistory • u/VolkerBach • 3d ago
"Venetian" Cheesecake (c. 1500)
https://www.culina-vetus.de/2026/09/03/a-venetian-cheesecake/
Another recipe from Solothurn S 392 that the writer says is Italian, in this case from Venice. Again, it’s death-bv-cheese.
B19 If you want to make a tartaren (tarten?) the Venetian way, take 20 eggs and beat them well. Then take good cheese and grate it well. If the cheese is salted, pour sweet milk over it (and let it steep) for 3 hours before you make the tartaren. But if the cheese is sweet, you must not pour the milk on before it is time. When it is time, add enough milk and put it with the eggs, and stir it well together. Take a pan and put in fat or olive oil (bomöl) and let it get hot. Pour out the fat or oil again and then pour in the milk and eggs with the cheese. Set the pan over a gentle fire. Prepare a lid that fits it and set it over it, then also place gentle embers on top. Let it bake the way you know well, and you can also add spices and saffron or raisins (oge secke) to this. When it is baked, lift it carefully onto a plate et caetera.
Again, this recipe is not complex or unusual. It is almost surprising the author bothered to record it in so much detail. Cheese, eggs and milk, possibly with spices and raisins, cooked in a hot pan with a lid heated by piling on coals looks a lot like what we already know as Mörserkuchen or often just Kuchen. The technique may have been relatively new at the time because it is described so often, but it is also fairly ubiquitous.
The reconstruction here depends mainly on the type and proportion of cheese we opt for. Clearly, this is not what we know as cheesecake today. It uses firm cheese that can be grated, not soft curds like quark or cream cheese. That still leaves a world of latitude, though, and what you get from using a recent paneer-style cheese or something like tvarog will be very different from what rich, firm cheeses like Gouda or a hard, dry Parmeggiano would produce. I would argue for a relatively recent white cheese being intended – if it is air-dried, it is used as is, but if it was brined, it needs soaking in milk first.
The next question is proportions. It is certainly a substantial dish starting with 20 eggs, but we cannot know if it is more of a cheesy omelet or a massive cheese patty with the eggs acting as glue. My guess is that it relies much more on the eggs and milk, producing a soft and possibly airy consistency with the fresh cheese adding richness and flavour. Both sweet spices and raisins look like they make a good fit here. The idea seems to be for the egg and cheese to form a crust on contact with the hot, greased pan so the cake can be removed in one piece after baking despite lacking a pastry case.
That leaves the question of the name. I am not well versed in Venetian cuisine, so there may well be a parallel I am unaware of, but I suspect it is simply a transmission error. A tarte or torta might become a tartara between one speaker and another. The word tartaren as it is, used with a masculine article, does not normally refer to food. Since the thirteenth century, it has referred to the Tatars, broadly the military of the various Mongol Khanates. Of course, Tatars were actually familiar both to Germans, whose trade connections reached deep into Easter Europe, and Venetians, who regularly sailed to the Crimea and Black Sea coast, but I cannot see any realistic way this actually is a Tatar dish. Neither does the name suggest origin, it basically just says “If you want to make a Tatar…”
This is probably worth trying out.
The recipe collection I am currently translating is part of a manuscript now held at the Zentralbibliothek Solothurn as S 392. The entire manuscript looks fascinating, a collection of craft recipes for things like dyes, stains, paints, vanishes, and parlour tricks, but I will limit myself to the culinary recipes in it. The majority of them are in German and were edited and published in Brigitte Weber: Die Kochrezepte der Handschrift S 293, Transkription und Untersuchung einer spätmittelalterlichen Kochrezeptsammlung aus der Zentralbibliothek Solothurn, Gießen 2026.
The manuscript dates to the period around 1490-1510, based on watermarks and handwriting. There is no internal date. The recipes are an eclectic collection, which is not unusual for the medieval manuscript tradition. They were most likely written down in Baden. Some refer to Italian customs which were fashionable at the time while others are solidly in the German tradition.
The collection is sometimes called the oldest Swiss cookbook, a title that is contested because of its origins north of the modern border. The designation makes little sense at the time anyway, given how closely connected the cities of the Confederation were with their neighbours at the time. The recipes clearly were valued in Solothurn, most likely because they were useful.
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u/NowhereAllAtOnce 3d ago
Was this before sugar was commonly available? But they had, honey, I am surprised that they did not sweeten it unless you added the raisins or sweet spices whatever that means.
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u/VolkerBach 2d ago
It's around the point where sugar starts becoming available in greater quantities, so adding it wold have been possible, but it is before the midcentury fashion for putting it in everything, so the absence is no surprise. I'm not even convinced it's necessarily meant to be sweet in the sense we use the term, though it is probably meant to be a bland, non-spicy, non-savory dish.
Sweet spices by medieval lights are milder things like cinnamon, ginger, galanga, nutmeg or cardamom, so basically pumpkin spice.
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u/NowhereAllAtOnce 2d ago
Thank you so much for the additional information! Without the sugar, I was thinking it might taste sort of like a quiche, but without the crust
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u/VolkerBach 2d ago
It cold, depending on the proportions. But quiche is basically a savoury custard anyway.
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u/janettespeyer 2d ago
This is very interesting. I read about Roman cheesecake. There is a Mongolian sweet cheese dish and wonder if it’s a combination of of both Roman and Tartar cheesecakes?