Tiramisu

Tiramisu

Tiramisu with Blueberries and Raspberries
Course	Dessert
Place of origin	Treviso, Veneto
Creator	Robert Linguanotto
Serving temperature	cold
Main ingredients	Savoiardi, egg yolks, mascarpone, cocoa, coffee

Tiramisu (from Italian, spelled tiramisù [tiramiˈsu], meaning "pick me up", "cheer me up" or "lift me up") is a popular coffee-flavoured Italian custard dessert. It is made of ladyfingers dipped in coffee, layered with a whipped mixture of eggs, sugar, and mascarpone cheese, flavoured with cocoa. The recipe has been adapted into many varieties of cakes and other desserts. Its origins are often disputed among Italian regions such as Veneto, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Piedmont, and others.

Most accounts of the origin of tiramisu date its invention to the 1960s in the region of Veneto, Italy, at the restaurant "Le Beccherie" in Treviso, Italy. Specifically, the dish is claimed to have first been created by a confectioner named Roberto Linguanotto, owner of "Le Beccherie" and his apprentice, Francesca Valori, whose maiden name was Tiramisu. Some debate remains, however. Accounts by Carminantonio Iannaccone (as first reported by David Rosengarten in The Rosengarten Report and later followed up by The Baltimore Sun and The Washington Post) claim the tiramisu sold at Le Beccherie was made by him in his bakery, created by him on 24 December 1969. Other sources report the creation of the cake as originating towards the end of the 17th century in Siena in honour of Grand Duke Cosimo III. Regardless, recipes named "tiramisu" are unknown in cookbooks before the 1960s and the Italian-language dictionary Sabatini Coletti traces the first printed mention of the word to 1980, while Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary gives 1982 as the first mention of the dessert.