Placenta is the Cato the Elder cake most like modern cheesecake. Its recipe combines a separately prepared pastry crust with layers of cheese and honey, then bakes the assembled dessert.
Cato recorded the recipe in De agri cultura, a Roman agricultural work traditionally dated to around 160 BCE. The surviving recipes also include libum and savillum, but those cakes do not match the modern cheesecake structure as closely. Placenta’s distinct crust-and-cheese arrangement is the key comparison, not simply the presence of dairy.
The ancient dessert was not cheesecake in the modern cream-cheese sense. It used ingredients such as sheep’s cheese, honey, flour or semolina dough, and bay leaves, and the finished cake was covered with honey. The Latin name is related to the Greek plakous, meaning a flat or layered cake. Modern cheesecake developed much later, with regional forms and commercial cream cheese appearing in the 19th century.