The origins of tiramisu can be traced back to the 17th century as a dessert in northwestern Italy called Zuppa del Duca or Zuppa Inglese, but the real tiramisu began to appear in the 60s of the 20th century in the northwestern part of Venice, Italy. Locals use Mascarpone cheese as the main ingredient, and finger biscuits instead of the traditional dessert sponge cake, adding coffee, cocoa powder and other elements.
There are different opinions about the origin of Tiramisu, and according to what Sanneng Jun has heard, there are three versions.
Story one
An Italian soldier is about to go to war, but there is nothing left at home. In order to prepare dry food for him, his wife, who loved him, made all the biscuits and bread that could be eaten in the family into a pastry, which means “take me away”, and that pastry was called tiramisu. Whenever this soldier eats tiramisu on the battlefield, he thinks of his home and his loved ones. In Italian, tiramisu means “take me away”, taking away not only delicious food, but also love and happiness.
Story two
A boy named Fvan falls in love with a girl named Jane. The boy is convinced that tiramisu cake with a similar name to Tiramisu will bring him good luck. So he spent many days and nights making a very delicate cake according to the method of making tiramisu, and named this cake “Tiramisu Love”. The girl ate this cake, felt a strong love and married the boy. Since then, the story has been widely circulated in the township. Tiramisu cake has become synonymous with love and affection.
Story three
It is said that Tiramisu was originally called zuppa del duca, because it was invented for the Grand Duke Cosimo III de’Medici (Medici III), and it was so popular with the duke that it began to take the court by storm. However, there is a fault in the interpretation of how the “duke’s sweet soup” evolved into Tiramisu.
Tiramisu entered the Italian dictionary in the 80s of the last century, and although the word tiramisu can now be seen everywhere in Chinese cities, it is only forty or fifty years since its birth, and its popularity can be seen.
Click on a relevant Chinese website and you’ll find this information: Quimper is the owner of the restaurant Le Becherie in Treviso, northern Italy. The chef in his restaurant came up with the original tiramisu recipe due to a mistake in 1969. Quimper was the first to standardize the production of this dim sum and put it on the menu for public sale. From this point of view, it is understandable to define him as the father of tiramisu.
