Tiramisu may be a classic, but it probably only dates from 1969
It feels like an age-old family recipe, but tiramisu does not appear in any cookbook before the 1960s. The strongest claim puts its birth in a Treviso restaurant on Christmas Eve 1969, and it reached an Italian dictionary only in 1980. Its rivals include a brothel legend and a 1938 frozen treat.
The name comes from tirami su, Italian for pick me up. The classic version layers coffee-soaked savoiardi biscuits with a cream of egg yolks, sugar and mascarpone, finished with cocoa. A Sydney Morning Herald restaurant column mentioned it in 1978, yet reference books of the 1970s ignored it; English dictionaries caught up in 1982, and a Veneto cookbook included it in 1983.
Le Beccherie in Treviso has the best-documented claim. According to obituaries of its owner Ado Campeol, his wife Alba di Pillo and the pastry chef Roberto Linguanotto created the dessert on 24 December 1969, and it joined the menu in 1972. When Linguanotto died in 2024, the restaurant named him as the inventor. Their original was round; square and rectangular dishes came later because the biscuits line up more easily.
Other stories compete. A restaurant in Pieris, in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, served a semi-frozen tiremesù from 1938, which may explain the name. Some trace it to Siena in the late 17th century, made to honour Grand Duke Cosimo III, and the Accademia del Tiramisù relays a tale that a 19th-century Treviso brothel keeper devised it as an aphrodisiac. The regions still spar: Friuli-Venezia Giulia got it listed as a traditional regional product in 2017, while in 2013 the Veneto's president, Luca Zaia, sought EU protection based on 1970 ingredients, which would bar a strawberry version from using the name.
Most of its parts are old. Italians had long used savoiardi in spoon desserts, egg creams like zabaglione were well established, and recipes from 1873 already paired coffee with egg custards. Mascarpone is the newcomer: the modern stabilised cheese became widely available only in the early 20th century, with industrial production near Treviso documented from 1933. Cooks now add Marsala, rum or amaretto to the coffee, or swap in fruit and panettone.
Source: Tiramisu
