Strictly   Cheesecakes™

It is not a modern invention and a cheesecake company is not original. Cheesecakes may well have been the first desserts ever made. Ancient Greeks are credited as the originators of cheesecake. First made to fortify athletes during the first Olympic Games in 776 B.C. and later they were made by brides for gifts to friends of their grooms, thus commencing the wedding cake tradition. Upon Roman conquest of Greece and as Julius Caesar conquered the continent, a great variety of cheesecakes were spawned. The mixture of traditions eventually led to the development of our traditional all-American style cheesecake.

Mankind has striven to create the perfect cheesecake since the dawn of time. The earliest history of the art is lost, but we know that cheesecake was already a popular dish in ancient Greece. With the Roman conquest of Greece, the secret fell into Roman hands. The Roman cake was more like a cheesecake, baked on a pastry base, or sometimes inside a pastry case. They were called libum by the Romans, and were often used as an offering at their temples to their gods.

Every market in Greece sold cheeses to those who could not make their own, and by the fourth century BC the popular fresh white Greek cheeses were being flavored with herbs and spices and baked into all manner of cakes and pies...The Roman Empire used cheese a great deal in cooking....Cato mentions a sauce based on salt which was used to preserve cheese and gives the recipe for a celebration wedding cake, in which the main ingredient was cheese, spiced and flavoured with grape must, fat, aniseed and bay leaves; this was also baked on top of bay leaves which impaired their agreeable aroma to the concoction.

Cheesecake is believed to have originated in ancient Greece. History has the first recorded mention of cheesecake, as being served to the athletes during the first Olympic Games held in 776 B.C.

Small cheesecakes were served to athletes during the first Olympic games held in 776 B.C. on the Isle of Delos.

1st Century A.D. – Marcus Porcius Cato (234-149 B.C.) was a Roman politican. His treatise on agriculture, De Agricultura or De Re Rustica, is the only work by him that has been preserved. He wrote about farming, wine making, and cooking among other things. This is his recipe for libum, the small sweet cake often given as a temple offering:

"Libum to be made as follows: 2 pounds cheese well crushed in a mortar; when it is well crushed, add in 1 pound bread-wheat flour or, if you want it to be lighter, just 1/2 a pound, to be mixed with the cheese. Add one egg and mix all together well. Make a loaf of this, with the leaves under it, and cook slowly in a hot fire under a brick."

1000 A.D. - Cheesecakes were introduced to Great Britain and Western Europe by the Roman conquering armies. By 1000 A.D., cheesecakes were flourishing throughout Scandinavia, England, and northwestern Europe.

Apicus, the foremost Roman gastronome, included a very elaborate dish among his recipes, served cold, in which the cheese was blended with honey, peppermint, watermelon, vinegar and many other ingredients. Up to the eighteenth century a great deal of cheese was eaten in Europe, and especially France. The people of high rank developed a sweet tooth. Sweet desserts became so popular that the only kind of cheese considered elegant was cream cheese heavily sweetened and flavoured with perfumed oils. Rove sheep's milk cheese sprinkled with orange-flower water is still a specialty of Marseilles. Eaten in the evening, it is supposed to be an aid in slumber.

In 1872, cream cheese was invented by American dairymen, who were trying to recreate the French cheese, Neufchâtel. James L. Kraft invented pasteurized cheese in 1880, and that lead to the development of Philadelphia cream cheese, the most popular cheese used for making cheesecakes today.

1880 - The Kraft foods website states that the Empire Cheese Company of New York began producing PHILADELPHIA BRAND Cream Cheese for a New York distributor called Reynolds. In 1912, James Kraft developed a method to pasteurize cream cheese (Philadelphia cream cheese), and soon other manufacturers of dairy products offered this newer kind of cream cheese.

New York cheesecake is the pure, undulated cheesecake with no fancy ingredients added either to the cheesecake or placed on top of it. It is made with pure cream cheese, cream, eggs, and sugar. Everybody has a certain image of New York Style Cheesecake. According to New Yorkers, only the great cheesecake makers are located in New York, and the great cheesecake connoisseurs are also in New York. In the 1900s, cheesecakes were very popular in New York. Every restaurant had their version. I believe the name "New York Cheesecake" came from the fact that New Yorkers referred to the cheesecakes made in New York as "New York Cheesecake." New Yorkers say that cheesecake wasn't really cheesecake until it was cheesecake in New York.

1929 - Arnold Reuben, owner of the legendary Turf Restaurant at 49th and Broadway in New York City, claimed that his family developed the first cream-cheese cake recipe. Other bakeries relied on cottage cheese. According to legend, he was served a cheese pie in a private home, and he fell in love with the dessert. Using his hostess' recipe and a pie she made with ingredients he provided, he then began to develop his own recipe for the perfect cheesecake. Reuben soon began to serve his new recipe in his Turf Restaurant, and the cheesecake quickly became very popular with the people who frequented Reuben's Broadway restaurant.

2007-The verdict is in: Americans are in the mood for dessert-only restaurants. Nearly 1 out of 3 fine-dining operators reported that consumers bought more desserts in 2005 than they did in 2003. In January 2006, Stephane Lemagnen and Laurent Lanneau, 31 and 34, respectively, catered to the craving by opening Room 4 Dessert, one of New York City's first dessert-only establishments. The restaurant offers a variety of dessert-tasting menus to be paired with wines and teas, and culinary masterpieces are created before customers' very eyes. No wonder curious pastry chefs come from the West Coastz Visitors consider the dessert bar a must-hit spot in New York City and 2007 sales are expected to reach $600,000.