The true story of tiramisu’
Open an old Italian cookbook, flip through the index, and…surprise! No tiramisu’. My first encounter with Tiramisu’ was in 1985. I was in Italy at the time: a friend of mine told me about this new recipe that she got. She was so enthused that I felt compelled to try it right away. The taste was unbelievably good, like I’ve never had before. Since then I fell in love with this dessert.
Everyone already knows that Tiramisu’ means “recuperator” in Italian, due to the high energy content (eggs and sugar) and the caffeine of the strong espresso. There are many different stories about the origin of tiramisu. It’s a layered cake; therefore, some place its origin in Tuscany, where another famous layered Italian dessert is very popular. It is called “Zuppa Inglese” (English soup). It’s not English and it’s not a soup. Instead it is a simple biscuit or biscuit cake, dipped in “alkermes” liqueur, and alternate layers of chocolate and custard. Layered cakes have been around for a long time. The brilliant idea of Tiramisu’ is not in the layering technique, but in the components. The great invention of combining coffee, zabaglione cream and chocolate: This is the true innovation in Tiramisu’.
I love studying food history. In my book “The Timeless Art of Italian Cooking – Centuries of Delicious Dining”, there is extensive information on the culinary history of the various regions of Italy. I tried to trace the origin of tiramisu by researching many Italian cookbooks. The first clue is from the famous Italian gourmet Giuseppe Maffioli. In his book “Il ghiottone Veneto”, (The Venetian Glutton), first published in 1968, he talks at length about Zabaglione custard. The name of this cream originates from Zabaja, a sweet dessert popular in the Illiria region. It is the coastal area across the Adriatic Sea that was Venetian territory for a long time during the golden age of the “Repubblica Serenissima” (The Most Serene Republic) of Venice. Zabaglione was made in those days with sweet wine from Cyprus.
“The groom’s single friends,” says Maffioli, “at the end of the long wedding banquet, mocking maliciously, gave him a large bottle of zabajon before the bride and groom left, to guarantee a successful and prolonged honeymoon.” “The zabajon”, continues Maffioli, “sometimes whipped cream was added, but in this case it was served very cold, almost frozen, and it was accompanied by baicoli, small thin Venetian cookies invented in the 18th century by a baker from the neighborhood of Santa Margherita of Venice”. As we can see, the addition of whipped cream, the serving temperature, the cookies, all these elements are close to the modern tiramisu recipe. And even the allusion to the energetic properties of Zabaglione seem to refer to the name of Tiramisu.
Later in my research, the oldest recipe I could find was in Giovanni Capnist’s book “I Dolci del Veneto” (The Desserts of Veneto). The first edition was published in 1983 and has a classic tiramisu recipe. “Recent recipe with endless variations from the city of Treviso,” says Capnist, “restaurant discovery more than family tradition.”
But the last word on the origin of tiramisu is from the book by Fernando and Tina Raris “La Marca Gastronómica” published in 1998, a book entirely dedicated to the cuisine of the city of Treviso. The authors remember what Giuseppe Maffioli wrote in an article from 1981: “Tiramisu” was born recently, just 10 years ago in the city of Treviso. It was first proposed in the restaurant. The dessert and its name immediately became very popular. , and this cake and the name were copied by many restaurants first in Treviso and then throughout Italy”. Still today the restaurant “Le Beccherie” makes the dessert with the classic recipe: gingerbreads soaked in bitter strong espresso coffee, mascarpone cream- zabaglione and bitter cocoa powder Alba and Ado Campeol, owners of the restaurant, regret not having patented the name and the recipe, especially to avoid all the speculations and conjectures about the origin of this cake, and the dissemination of so many recipes that have nothing to do with the original Tiramisu’.
I tried countless different recipes of the infinite variations of Tiramisu’, but the classic one (the recipe that I show on my website), the recipe of the restaurant “Le Beccherie”, is still the one that I prepare today and the one that I prefer. .
As an example of one of the many delicious variations on Tiramisu’, I show on my website a step-by-step recipe for “Tiramisu’ with Mixed Berries” that is quickly becoming a new classic.
Anna Maria Volpi Nov. 20, 2003