tiramisu, dessert, of Italian origin, that blends layers of espresso and liqueur-soaked sponge cake with a filling of mascarpone cheese and is then topped with cocoa powder.
The phrase tira mi sù—or, in the dialect of Venice and surrounding provinces, tireme sù—means literally “pick me up.” Its origin is hotly debated, though most sources agree that the dessert is a variation on the northeastern Italian sbatudin, egg yolks beaten with sugar and served with ladyfingers. One probably spurious story traces tiramisu as a restorative for clients in a high-toned house of ill repute in Treviso, another to the kitchen of a duke in Siena, which is in central and not northeastern Italy.
It is more likely that tiramisu’s origin is far more recent. Some sources hold that the dish was an invention of a chef named Roberto “Loly” Linguanotto, who wanted to modernize sbatudin for his Treviso restaurant Le Beccherie, calling it tiremesù. However, a recipe published in 1959, a decade before Linguanotto’s claimed invention, traces the dish to the town of Tolmezzo, which lies not in Treviso but in the nearby province of Udine, in the Friuli–Venezia Giulia region. That earlier recipe was developed by Norma Pielli, who owned a restaurant popular with hikers in the Alpine region, one of whom gave the dish its name. On the basis of this evidence, the Ministry of Agriculture gave the PAT (prodotto agroalimentare tradizionale, “traditional agricultural food product”) designation for tiramisu to Friuli–Venezia Giulia, a bestowal that officials in Treviso and the Veneto reject as illegitimate.
Both contending restaurants use the sponge cake in ladyfinger form, called savoiardi, but thereafter the recipes differ: Le Beccherie uses egg yolks alone, while Pielli’s Albergo Roma uses mascarpone as well. Neither uses alcohol, although many other recipes call for brandy, Grand Marnier, or other liqueur. As a result, in an annual “traditional” tiramisu competition in the Veneto region, alcohol is forbidden. By some estimates, at least 200 variations on the basic recipe have been published, many developed by chefs far outside Italy. So popular has the dessert become since the 1980s that it appears on nearly every menu inside the country as well as in Italian restaurants around the world.