Cheesecake
dessert
Cheesecake is a dessert made with a soft fresh cheese (typically cottage cheese, cream cheese, mascarpone, quark, or ricotta), and sugar, with either eggs or cream depending if it is to be baked or not. It may have a crust or base made from crushed cookies, digestive biscuits, graham crackers, pastry, or sometimes sponge cake. Cheesecake is known for its rich, creamy flavor and smooth texture. It may be baked or unbaked and is usually served chilled.
Cheesecake dates back to ancient Greece, and evolved into the modern form around the 18th century. There are many regional variations of cheesecake.
Vanilla, spices, lemon, chocolate, pumpkin, or other flavors may be added to the main cheese layer. Additional flavors and visual appeal may be added by topping the finished dessert with fruit, whipped cream, nuts, cookies, fruit sauce, chocolate syrup, or other ingredients.
History
Early cheesecakes
Ancient Greece
Although its exact origin is uncertain, cheesecake is reputed to have originated in Ancient Greece, where cakes containing cheese were served to athletes in the first Olympic Games in 776 BC. Athenaeus lists a wide range of cheese-filled cakes in the Deipnosophists. He also reports that Callimachus, in his List of Various Books, mentions four now-lost treaties on the Art of Making Cheesecakes, written by Aegimius, Hegesippus, Metrobius, and Phaetus.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cheesecake” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.