Tiramisu no more

Posted on 03/11/2021 by

53 Comments

I once spent an entire three week business trip to Milan in search of the best Tiramisù the city had to offer. Yes, I ate the dessert every day in a different restaurant. By far the best examples were those that were quite clearly homemade, probably to Mamma’s secret recipe. I make a mean version myself which unlike the original, features a fair amount of alcohol!

So sad news for dessert lovers everywhere as Ado Campeol, the guy who invented the dessert in the 1970s, passed away aged 93 last weekend.

Tiramisu Banque d'images et photos libres de droit - iStock

The 1970s-born treat – of coffee-soaked sponge fingers laden with a rich mascarpone cream – originally appeared on the menu at his family-run restaurant, Le Beccherie which opened in 1939 with Ado taking over post-WWII. The restaurant is in the town of Treviso in Italy’s north-east, and today it’s one of the country’s most famous exports. While the dish was added to their menu in 1972, it was never patented by the family – big mistake Ado!

Le Beccherie | Treviso

According to the dessert’s co-inventor, Chef Roberto Linguanotto, the dish was the result of an accident while making vanilla ice cream. Mr Linguanotto dropped some mascarpone cheese into a bowl of eggs and sugar and, after he noticed the mixture’s pleasant taste, he told Campeol’s wife Alba.The pair then perfected the dessert by adding ladyfinger sponges soaked in coffee, and sprinkling it with cocoa and calling it “Tiramisù”.

And there we have it. It wasn’t invented by Campeol at all but by his wife and chef!

Like many celebrated dishes, tiramisu’s origins – like its ingredients – remains contentious. In 2010, a delegation from the Italian Academy of Cuisine certified the restaurant’s version of the recipe, naming pastry chef Roberto Linguanotto as its co-creator (although it’s widely said that he co-created the dish with Alba Campeol).

The Accademia del Tiramisu, an independent organisation devoted exclusively to the pudding and its history, says the combination of mascarpone, sugar, coffee and biscuits was long used in Italy’s Veneto region as a tonic – sometimes served as a recharger to depleted clients post coitus by bordello madams, or to nursing mothers to keep their milk supply and energy up. Its name is derived from the phrase “tireme su” – literally “lift me up” in Treviso dialect.

According to the Campeols’ son, Carlo, who now runs the restaurant, Alba was familiar with the local pick-me-up. As a new mother – not long before the dish was added to Le Beccherie’s menu in 1972 – she was snacking on a mix of tiramisu’s key ingredients (mascarpone, sugar, biscuits and coffee) prepared by her mother-in-law every morning for breakfast.

By the mid 1980s, the dessert had crossed the Atlantic and was causing a stir in New York, with controversies erupting around just how to make it and what exactly it even was. In 1985 the New York Times ran a story attempting to unpack the mysteries of “a deceptively airy but shamefully rich creation in the mousse-pudding family that has at least 200 variations”. It said the dish was hardly known in the city just a few years earlier, with one NYC chef claiming it was the first Italian dessert to compete with French cuisine for international attention.

It’s a debate that continues to rage. In 2013 Luca Zaia, longstanding governor of the dish’s home region of Veneto, led a campaign to protect the recipe from egregious mutations – in particular, the unacceptable addition of strawberries and cream.

Less concerned with the sanctity of the dish, the Tiramisu World Cup – which has been running since 2017, when Linguanotto led the judges panel – is surely the world’s largest amateur tiramisu contest. While the experimental category allows for the inclusion of almost anything, it still adheres to the recipe’s essence and forbids the omission of any of the core ingredients: mascarpone, coffee, cocoa and eggs. Yolks are also compulsory, and competitors are judged against daunting evaluation criteria such as “harmony of taste and perception of lightness”.

Category: Food and Wine, Non vegan dishesTags:

53 Comments on “Tiramisu no more”

  4. Difficult choices desserts are tops in my menu. However, is that a recurring story all the famous ones were created by mistake or accident! I wish they keep making these lol!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  10. One of my 2 fav desserts!! The other is fruit pavlova.

    One of my very very few regrets in life is that I didn’t get a local indie coffee shop’s tiramisu recipe before the owner lost the business to a drug addiction.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  14. I also thought that it was an old traditional dish.
    And there I was, thinking that the ladyfingers were supposed to be soaked in coffee liqueur … 😀 😀 (I did)

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  15. One of my favorite desserts! I ate my first in Venice in 1980, and once home in the US, searched the Italian north end of Boston for similar with little luck. Now, it is common here, but none taste as good as that one from Venice!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  18. “I once spent an entire three week business trip to Milan in search of the best Tiramisù the city had to offer.”
    Ha, I can’t think of a finer way to live life! 😃

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Follow View from the Back on WordPress.com
Translate
November 2021
M T W T F S S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930  
%d bloggers like this: