The World That Was - 13th Century Andalusian Honey-cake

Hello and Welcome to The World That Was!

Today, I'll be making a 13th century cheesecake, from Andalucía - the South of Spain! The original text is from a medieval cookbook, by Ibn Razin al-Tujibi, and the audience seems to be for elite members of society. Though today, it's a simple and easy cake that anyone can make inside an hour!

Ingredients

1 cup flour

1 cup milk

1tbsps yeast (or 1/3 cup sourdough starter)

250g ricotta (or other soft white cheese)

honey

olive oil

cinnamon

Method

1 - Prepare Dough

To begin with, we need to make a simple dough. Pour a cup of flour into a bowl, along with a tablespoon of yeast. Dry yeast wouldn't have been available in antiquity, but wild yeast from a sourdough starter would have been used, and a third of a cup can be used here.

Pour in a cup of room-temperature milk on top of this, along with a splash of olive oil. The original recipe calls for "fat" which can be any one of a huge number of things - like butter, lard, or oils. But olive oil would have also been used. Mix everything together until it takes on a very runny texture. Add a little water if your dough is too dry.

Cover this with a towel and leave it to raise over an hour or so in a warm area.

2 - Assemble Cake

After an hour, go oil up a baking dish. Pour in a ladleful of your dough, and spread it around the base.

On top of this, place a few dollops of ricotta cheese. White cheese is specified here - which again could mean any one of a number of cheeses, but ricotta, or a soft feta, would work well here. Ladle in another layer of dough, before repeating the ricotta process. You can also add some honey between these layers. Though this wasn't specified, it adds a nice kick of sweetness to the final dish.

Repeat this layering process until you run out of cheese or dough, making sure the top of the cake is covered in a layer of dough.

Place your cake into an oven preheated to 250° C /485° F or as high as your oven will go, and let this bake for a half an hour, rotating it halfway through so it cooks evenly.

3 - Finish Cake

It should be done when the top of it is golden and firm. Pour some honey over the top of this while it's cooling in the baking dish, and sprinkle some cinnamon over the honey. If you want, you could also use some freshly-ground black pepper which adds a nice warm background to the finished cake.

Leave to cool a bit at room temperature, and serve up!

The finished dish is super light and sweet, and although some of the ricotta didn't melt completely during the baking process, they have a nice texture when biting into a piece. The cake itself is more like a very light, sweet bread, but is still a really nice and simple dish to make!

The cake itself was possibly not easily available to wider members of Andalusian society - but that's not to say it was totally off-limits! The ingredients were readily available to people, though the fineness of the flour would have varied, depending on the social status of the person making it (in that richer households would have had an easier time spending money on luxurious, fine flour than a poor household would have).