The governor of Treviso province in northern Italy says the region has lost one of its "gastronomical stars"—restaurateur Ado Campeol, widely known as the "father of tiramisu." While the 93-year-old and his family never copyrighted the recipe, historians believe the dessert was invented at Campeol's Le Beccherie restaurant in the early 1970s, the Guardian reports. The dish, whose name means "lift-me-up" in the local dialect, is made from egg yolks whipped with sugar and mascarpone cheese, layered over coffee-soaked ladyfinger biscuits and topped with cocoa powder. Campeol added it to the menu in 1972.
The restaurant is now run by Campeol's son Carlo, who has this origin story for tiramisu: While breastfeeding him, his mother, Alba had turned to mascarpone mixed with sugar and biscuits soaked in coffee to keep her energy up, which is traditional in Treviso," Carlo told Italian media. Then, with chef Roberto Linguanotto, "she turned those elements into a pudding." Linguanotto has said he worked with Alba Campeol on the dessert after he accidentally dropped mascarpone cheese into a bowl of eggs and sugar, the BBC reports.
It was at Campeol's restaurant, "thanks to intuition and the imagination of his wife, that was born the tiramisu, one of the most celebrated desserts in the world," regional governor Luco Zaia said Saturday on Facebook, per CBS. The governor led a push in 2013 to have the dish certified by the European Union, arguing that versions with strawberries and cream were not true tiramisu. Cempeol, whose father opened the restaurant in 1939, is survived by his wife, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. (More dessert stories.)
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