Cassata of Oplontis is a reconstructed traditional Ancient Roman recipe (based on a painting from the Villa of Oplontis) for a dessert cake of a red-coloured marzipan surround with a honeyed ricotta with fruit and nut brittle filling topped with white ricotta cheese and dried fruit. The full recipe is presented here and I hope you enjoy this classic Ancient Roman version of: Cassata of Oplontis.
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Original Recipe
Just as in my recipe for Pompeiian Pizza no extant recipe exists for this dessert/cake. Instead, it's been reconstructed on the basis of a wall painting found in one of the friclinia of the Roman villa of Oplontis (see image accompanying this recipe); but it production is based on the principles of ancient pastry/marzipan making and on its similarity to the traditional Sicilian dessert known as cassata siciliana.
Modern Redaction
The quantities given below are enough for a springform cake tin of 30cm diameter and 5cm hight.
Reserve some of the dates and a few of the prettier dried fruit for decoration.
Finely chop the remaining dried fruit.
Pour half the honey into a saucepan. Heat gently until molten then add the walnuts and pine nuts. Continue cooking, stirring frequently, over medium heat until the nuts have caramelized into a brittle. Turn onto a greased piece of marble or similar. Allow the brittle to set then break into pieces.
Force the ricotta through a fine-meshed sieve. Reserve about 85g of it to decorate the top of the cake, which has to be snow white, and mix the rest with the remaining honey (reserve 100ml), a little at a time. The ricotta should be very sweet, more or less as sweet as a cassata siciliana — which is very sweet indeed. The cream should be worked well because is must be extremely smooth, soft and light. At this point add the diced dried fruit and the pieces of nut brittle.
Place the ground almonds in a bowl and add in enough of the reserved honey and the red food colouring to give you a bright red marzipan (work the left-over honey into the ricotta mixture). Now line your cake tin (both base and sides) with kitchen paper oiled on the inner surface so that it will come off easily when the cassata is turned out of the mould, leaving a smooth surface. Roll out the marzipan with a rolling pin to make a strip with which to line the sides of the mould and push it hard against the oiled paper.
Fill the cavity with the sweetened ricotta cream and refrigerate in the coldest part of your refrigerator (but not the freezer) to set for at least a day.
Turn the cassata out onto a round serving plate, delicately remove the oiled paper both from the strip of marzipan and from the top, cover the top with a thin layer of ricotta, which you should force through a sieve and work a little so that it is very smooth as well as white. Finally, decorate the dessert with the reserved fruit, imitating as far as possible the image in the Oplontis painting.
