Tiramisù - common but not to be scorned

"There cannot be a restaurant or trattoria in Italy that does not have their stock of little individual bowls of tiramiù in the freezer, nor a housewife that does not have a favourite recipe cut out from a magazine. This easy dessert which is only about 15 years old has many versions." Claudia Roden (1989)

Well last Saturday's lunch out was Italian and how more Italian can you get than tiramisù. Well that's what I thought anyway - and here I am about to be served an enormous slice of heaven that looked a little like this:

This picture is from an SBS recipe (they have about eight different recipes), and you can almost see how light and creamy it was. I think mine had alcohol in it - very possibly marsala, but I'm not sure. That's how gourmet I am.

For there is a lot of dispute about how to make it. Good old Wikipedia states:

"It is made of ladyfingers dipped in coffee, layered with a whipped mixture of eggs, sugar, and mascarpone cheese, flavoured with cocoa." Wikipedia

And certainly I would say that those few ingredients seem to be the fundamentals. But it's never that simple is it? And Felicity Cloake does her usual good job in testing out some of the variations. But even she can't cover everything that people do.

Like most people - unless you have looked at the internet for information on tiramisu - I assumed that tiramisu was a classic Italian dessert with origins back in almost ancient history. But no, although they squabble over exactly who invented it, it seems to only go back to Treviso in the Veneto in the late 60s. People have tried to say it's like a dessert designed for Cosimo de Medici III back in the 17th century in Siena - Zuppa del Duca, which later evolved into Zuppa Inglese. But these are really custards and not the same. Nevertheless I reckon that it is sort of an evolution of these dishes and others like it. To me it's the same sort of thing as trifle - but not.

So the really interesting question to me is how tiramisù came to be the world beating dessert that it is. And nobody seems to answer this. Yes word carries - you can imagine the locals in Treviso talking about it a bit, but surely not everybody in Treviso dined out at that particular restaurant. So somehow it spread through Italy, and thence to America. Well that's what the Americans say. Well they would wouldn't they? Why is it that in every alien movie that ever existed the aliens always land in America? Whether it was America or South Africa or Australia or wherever, I'm sure you can now get tiramisù in just about every Italian restaurant in the world. And the world wasn't digital back in the 60s, or 70s, or 80s - by which time it was big in America, thanks in part from some line in Sleepless in Seattle. Indeed maybe that's what made it so big in America - and thence the world, for we do all watch American movies. Anyway my point is that it's popularity didn't spread through Instagram or blogs, or tweets - and I don't even think there were so many TV food shows back then. Certainly no shows such as Masterchef or My Kitchen Rules. Even cookery books were not quite such a big thing. I know it is now over 50 years since the 60s which could take care of a global spreading of the word, but Claudia Roden, who thought we all knew about it, was writing a mere fifteen years after its invention and already it was a worldwide favourite. It's all rather a mystery to me.

So why should we like it?

"done well, there is no reason why a tiramisu shouldn't delight. After all, coffee, cream and booze is a classic after-dinner combination. It is considerably less likely to pick you up than an espresso and a shot of grappa, but it is a lot more fun." Felicity Cloake

"The sum is better than the parts. Between the mascarpone, sugar, unsweetened cocoa powder, tiramisu is this mutant flavor that doesn’t exist in nature. And that’s why people tend to love it." Brooks Headley

Incidentally the reference to 'pick you up' is because that's what the name means - well 'pick me up'.

As to the variations. The main ones seem to be whether you add alcohol or not, and if so what - rum, grand mariner, brandy, marsala? Whether it's just egg yolks or do you add some or all of the whites after whipping them up? How long do you soak the biscuits and what kind of biscuits. Well virtually everyone agrees the biscuits should be savoiardi and not the French lady fingers. And lastly cocoa or chocolate on top?

Then there are people who add fruit - surely more of a trifle then? and for the real extreme go Heston!

"there is nothing classic about my recipe, which is served in clean flower pots and topped with edible soil and chocolate herbs. The soil is delicious (caramelised white chocolate tastes like Caramac bars) and kids love it because eating it looks so wrong but it tastes so right!" Heston Blumenthal

You can find his recipe on the SBS website. The list of ingredients includes Grape Nuts cereal, hazelnut oil and leaf gelatine. He says it takes 1 hour 30 minutes to make and cooking skill required is Ace. So that rules me out. Besides I don't have a clean flowerpot.

However, there are lots of other possibilities out there. Felicity Cloake seemed to like Delia's version, shown below in an elegant glass, although she did take elements from elsewhere too.