Tiramisù

Not in Artusi, and it could not have been: tiramisù is a twentieth-century dessert, and a fairly late one. Treviso and Friuli both claim it, the dispute is genuine, and the earliest documented versions are from the 1960s and 1970s rather than from any older tradition.

Six ingredients, no cooking beyond the eggs, and no cream anywhere.

Ingredients

Serves 6.

	Metric	Imperial
Mascarpone, at room temperature	500 g	17.5 oz
Egg yolks	4	4
Egg whites	2	2
Caster sugar	100 g	3.5 oz
Savoiardi (hard ladyfingers)	about 300 g	about 10.5 oz
Strong espresso, cold	400 ml	13.5 fl oz
Cocoa powder, unsweetened	to finish	to finish

Savoiardi means the dry, brittle Italian kind, not the soft sponge fingers sold in most supermarkets elsewhere. Soft ones dissolve on contact and the dish becomes a trifle.

Method

1. Beat the yolks with three quarters of the sugar until pale and thick, several minutes rather than several seconds.
2. Fold in the mascarpone a third at a time. Fold, do not beat: mascarpone splits if you work it hard.
3. Whisk the two egg whites with the remaining sugar to soft peaks and fold them through. This is what makes it light rather than dense.
4. Dip each savoiardo in the cold coffee for one second per side. They should still be firm in the middle when you lay them down.
5. Layer: biscuits, cream, biscuits, cream. Finish with cream.
6. Chill at least six hours, ideally overnight. Dust with cocoa just before serving, never before chilling.

What goes wrong

It turns to slop. The biscuits were soaked rather than dipped. They keep absorbing coffee for hours after you assemble, so what feels barely wet at the time is correct.

The cream is grainy or split. Mascarpone was cold, or it was beaten instead of folded. Take it out of the fridge an hour beforehand.

The cocoa is a wet brown paste. Dusted too early. It draws moisture out of the cream overnight.

It will not hold a slice. That is normal and not a fault. Tiramisù is served by the spoon in most of Italy, and the versions firm enough to cut usually contain gelatine.

Why it works

Mascarpone is roughly 40 per cent fat with very little water, which is why it carries a set with no gelatine and no baking. The whipped whites add air the yolks cannot hold on their own, and the sugar in them stabilises that air long enough to survive a night in the fridge.

At the table

The most ordered dessert in Italy and the most abused. It is served cold, in a square cut from a tray, and it is one of the few desserts an Italian household genuinely makes rather than buys.

Because it is everywhere, it is a reliable way to read a restaurant. A tiramisu that arrives in a stemmed glass with a wafer in it came from a supplier. One that arrives as a slightly untidy square with the cocoa going soft at the edges was made in the building, probably that morning.

It is young, whatever anyone tells you. The claims cluster around Treviso in the 1960s and 1970s, and the dish has no history before that, which is unusual for something this established.

Coffee afterwards is normal even though the dessert is full of it. Nobody considers that a duplication.

The wine, if there is one, is a passito or a moscato. A cappuccino is not the answer here for reasons covered in the coffee guide, though the rule is looser than visitors are told.

What an Italian would say

That there is no cream in it. That Marsala or rum is optional and regional, and that the version made for children has neither. And that the coffee should be properly bitter, because everything else in the dish is sweet and the coffee is the only thing holding it up.

A note on raw eggs

The traditional recipe uses uncooked egg. If that matters to you, for pregnancy or for anyone frail, the usual Italian answer is a pasteurised egg product or yolks cooked to a zabaione over a bain-marie first. This site is not the place for a ruling on food safety; your own judgement and local guidance apply.