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Tiramisu (from the Italian language, spelled tiramisù [tiramiˈsu], from the Venetian tiramesù [tirameˈsu], meaning "pick me up", "cheer me up" or "lift me up")[1] is a popular coffee-flavoured Italian dessert. It is made of ladyfingers dipped in coffee, layered with a whipped mixture of eggs, sugar, and mascarpone cheese, flavoured with cocoa. The recipe has been adapted into many varieties of cakes and other desserts.[2] Its origins are often disputed among Italian regions of Veneto, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Piedmont, and others.

Most accounts of the origin of tiramisu date its invention to the 1960s in the region of Veneto, Italy, at the restaurant "Le Beccherie" in Treviso. Specifically, the dish is claimed to have first been created by a confectioner named Roberto Linguanotto, owner of "Le Beccherie".[3][4] Some debate remains, however.[5] Accounts by Carminantonio Iannaccone (as first reported by David Rosengarten in The Rosengarten Report and followed by The Baltimore Sun and The Washington Post) claim the tiramisu sold at Le Beccherie was made by him in his bakery, created by him on 24 December 1969.[6][7][8][9] Other sources report the creation of the cake as originating towards the end of the 17th century in Siena in honour of Grand Duke Cosimo III.[10] Regardless, recipes named "tiramisu" are unknown in cookbooks before the 1960s. The Italian-language dictionary Sabatini Coletti traces the first printed mention of the word to 1980, while Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary gives 1982 as the first mention of the dessert.[11] There is also evidence of a "Tiremesù" semi-frozen dessert served by the Vetturino restaurant in Pieris, in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia, since 1938.[12] This may be the name's origin, while the recipe for Tiramisu may have originated as a variation of another layered dessert, Zuppa Inglese.[13] It is mentioned in Giovanni Capnist's 1983 cookbook I Dolci del Veneto.[14] Among traditional pastry, tiramisu also has similarities with many other cakes, in particular with the Charlotte, in some versions composed of a Bavarian cream surrounded by a crown of ladyfingers and covered by a sweet cream; the Turin cake (dolce Torino), consisting of ladyfingers soaked in rosolio and alchermes with a spread made of butter, egg yolks, sugar, milk, and dark chocolate; and the Bavarese Lombarda, which is similar in the preparation and the presence of certain ingredients such as ladyfingers and egg yolks (albeit cooked ones). In Bavarese, butter and rosolio (or alchermes) are also used, but not mascarpone cream nor coffee.