More than 2,000 years before this land of Coronation cheese cake, the Greeks had a word for it—several in fact: Apician Cheese Cake, Aristoxenean, and Philoxenean among them. Then the Romans took it over and we read from an epistle of the period:
Thirty times in this one year, Charinus, while you have been arranging to make your will, have I sent you cheese cakes dripping with Hyblaean Thyme. (Celestial honey, such as that of Mount Hymettus we still get from Greece.)
Plato mentioned cheese cake, and a town near Thebes was named for it before Christ was born, at a time when cheese cakes were widely known as "dainty food for mortal man."
Today cheese cakes come in a half dozen popular styles, of which the ones flavored with fresh pineapple are the most popular in New York. But buyers delight in every sort, including the one hundred percent American type called cheese pies.
Indeed, there seems to be no dividing line between cheese cakes and cheese pies. While most of them are sweet, some are made piquant with pimientos and olives. We offer a favorite of ours made from popcorn-style pot cheese put through a sieve:
Pineapple Cheese Cake
2½ pounds sieved pot cheese
1-inch piece vanilla bean
¼ pound sweet butter, melted
½ small box graham crackers, crushed fine
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 small can crushed pineapple, drained
2 cups milk
⅓ cup flour
In a big bowl mix everything except the graham crackers and pineapple in the order given above. Butter a square Pyrex pan and put in the graham-cracker dust to make,a crust. Cover this evenly with the pineapple and pour in the cheese-custard mixture. Bake I hour in a "quiet" oven, as the English used to say for a moderate one, and when done set aside for 12 hours before eating.