The Original Tiramisu Recipe Doesn't Include This Common Ingredient

Tiramisu has seen all manner of creative twists and turns since its generally accepted introduction to the masses at Le Beccherie restaurant in Treviso, Italy, in the 1970s. Some of today's tiramisus are pepped up with lemony twists. There are also versions of creamy tiramisu with hazelnut. And the Marsala wine you'll see in plenty of tiramisu recipes can easily be swapped with other spirits like rum to create a different flavor profile. But the recipe that's broadly considered to be the original didn't actually include any booze at all.

Pinning down the actual facts of when anyone combined any particular combination of ingredients is a difficult task. But it is fair to say that Le Beccherie sent the sweet treat skyrocketing to popularity. And its original recipe called for just the coffee, cocoa powder, ladyfingers, mascarpone, sugar, and egg yolks you might recognize, but none of the alcohol that you might also be used to. And, you can, of course, make it either way with equal success.

Just like you can't quite pin down the one, true moment of tiramisu's creation with airtight accuracy, you can't really ID the precise moment it first got an ABV, either. It could have even been before it was popularized by Le Beccherie. Lore points to early tiramisu's use as an aphrodisiac — the very name does translate to "pick me up" in English, which could serve as a sort of double entendre, when you think about it. There were also standard tiramisu recipes that included alcohol in circulation by the 1980s, not to mention whatever home cooks and independent restaurants might have been doing in those pre-internet days. 

When you're trying a new recipe at home, it can actually help to use as few ingredients as recommended. As long as the foundation is in place, embracing just the basics first can help you tinker with the dish to your taste later. It also gives you fewer ingredients to buy in case you end up not even loving the finished product. So if it's your first time trying your hand at tiramisu, it might make more sense to use Le Beccherie's relatively pared down instructions as a starting point. Once you taste it, you can decide if it needs that fairly standard Marsala, a tip of rum, or maybe even something like a coffee-adjacent Sambuca to make your own signature creation.