Baklava Athenaeus. Several sources state that this Roman dessert continued to evolve during the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire into modern baklava. In antiquity the Greek word ' () was also used for Latin ', and the American scholar Speros Vryonis describes one type of plakous, koptoplakous (Byzantine Greek: κοπτοπλακοῦς), as a "Byzantine favorite" and "the same as the Turkish baklava", as do other writers. Indeed, the Roman word "placenta" () is used today on the island of Lesbos in Greece to describe a baklava-type dessert of layered pastry leaves containing crushed nuts that is baked and then covered in honey. Muhammad
Baklava over which dishes were originally Greek and which Turkish. Baklava, for example, is claimed by both countries. Greek and Turkish cuisine both built upon the cookery of the Byzantine Empire, which was a continuation of the cooking of the Roman Empire. Roman cuisine had borrowed a great deal from the ancient Greeks, but ' (and hence baklava) had a Latin, not a Greek, origin—please note that the conservative, anti-Greek Cato left us this recipe." Andrew Dalby identifies this, and surrounding dessert recipes in Cato, as coming from a "Greek tradition" and cites Antiphanes (fl. 3rd century BC) as quoted by