Mark Kurlansky's novel 'Cheesecake' was inspired by a recipe from ancient Rome

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Books, Arts

4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 23 July 2025

⏱️ 7 minutes

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Summary

In Mark Kurlansky's novel Cheesecake, a Greek family living on Manhattan's Upper West Side sets out to follow a recipe dating back to ancient Rome. What results is a block-wide battle to make the best cheesecake, set against the backdrop of a quickly-changing neighborhood. In today's episode, Kurlansky talks with NPR's Scott Simon about coming across the oldest written recipe, the food writer's relationship to fiction, and Kurlansky's own favorite cheesecake.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Fiction is all about making things up that are true.
0:09.9	That's a line from today's guest, Mark Karlanski. He's a food writer known for deep, thorough dives on subjects such as salt or oysters or cod, but he's just written a novel titled Cheesecake about a Cheesecake Recipe
0:22.4	that has a legacy of more than 2,000 years.
0:26.6	Karlansky has written plenty of novels, actually.
0:28.9	And in this interview with M.P.R. Scott, Simon, it seems as if, for Kulanski, fiction
0:33.4	and nonfiction are parallel roots towards the same destination, which is the truth.
0:39.5	That's ahead.
0:41.0	In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.
0:45.9	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show, sources and methods.
0:52.4	NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people,
0:56.2	helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.
0:59.7	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:05.4	There's a saying that everything in New York winds up being about real estate.
1:10.5	Mark Kalanski's new novel is set mostly on one block of New York winds up being about real estate. Mark Kalanski's new novel is set
1:12.3	mostly on one block of New York's Upper West Side that sees a lot of change from the 1970s on,
1:18.8	but begins with a cheesecake, one that traces back to Cato the Elder. He was one of Rome's
1:25.8	most right-wing politicians. The kind of figure who could not get elected
1:30.3	dog-catcher on the Upper West Side, if such a position, God forbid, existed in the neighborhood.
1:36.8	But more than 2,000 years ago, Cato did something that had never been done before.
1:42.7	He published a recipe.
1:46.9	Once a recipe is published, there's no telling where it will go. It may live forever. Roman senators may not be immortal, but recipes can be.
1:53.8	The novel is Cheesecake and Mark Karlansky, the James Beard Award-winning food writer, joins us
	...

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