" This shows that the cheese is the main thing, and
the and-so-forth just a matter of taste. We are delighted to record
that the Lord Mayor of London picked traditional cheese tarts, the
maids of honor mentioned earlier in this section, as the Coronation
dessert with which to regale the second Queen Elizabeth at the city
luncheon in Guildhall This is most fitting, since these tarts were
named after the maids of honor at the court of the first Queen
Elizabeth. The original recipe is said to have sold for a thousand
pounds. These Richmond maids of honor had the usual cheese cake
ingredients: butter and eggs and pounds of cheese, but what made the
subtle flavor: nutmeg, brandy, lemon, orange-flower water, or all
four?
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.
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