Tiramisu, analysis of a recipe – analysis of tiramisù recipes from Food.com

Topics

Tiramisu ingredients

A brief history of the recipe

Ratings and similar rating patterns on Food.com

Calories, prep time, Number of steps, Reviews, Submission: Year, Months, and Reviews

Users like classic ingredients

Conclusion, the most rated recipes

Tiramisu ingredients
According to “La Cucina Italiana” (2020), a classic Tiramisu is made with:
LIST OF INGREDIENTS
2 C. of mascarpone cheese
10 OZ. of ladyfingers
9 OZ. of coffee (regular or espresso)
1 C. of sugar, plus extra
Marsala wine
4 of eggs
Cocoa powder
Salt

A brief history of the recipe

Financial Times journalist Giusti (2023) recently interviewed Professor Grandi from the University of Parma. Grandi gives Treviso as the “birthplace” of Tiramisu, but other experts argue that the dish might have its origins in Torino.
Wherever it comes from, the combination of mascarpone cheese, eggs, sugar, ladyfingers, coffee, and cocoa powder generates a beautifully layered, silky, and rich dessert.
Some recipes for tiramisu posted on Food.com are similar (but others are not).
The tiramisu data comes from the same dataset I previously used to analyze carbonara and pizza recipes. The complete dataset scraped from Food.com is available here. The dataset has 682 rows and 25 columns (26 included the grepl result).

A variety of recipes contain the word “tiramisu” in their title, including “tiramisu cupcakes,” “tiramisu cake from Tim,” “lemon tiramisu,” and “strawberry tiramisu.”

Ratings

Reviewers generally like the recipes, and 515 have been rated enthusiastically with five stars (similar to the patterns for pizza and carbonara).

Calories

As most people know, tiramisu is not a low-calorie dessert.  The tiramisu recipes rated 1 star have the highest average calories (422), while 5-star recipes average 330 calories; 2-star recipes have the lowest average number of calories (252).

Since only 8 recipes were rated with 1 star, let’s check these first.

True to its name, the “cheat’s tiramisu” has 602 calories; together with the “tiramisu olive garden” the “cheat’s tiramisu” contributes to the high calories average of 1-star rated recipes.

It might not be surprising that “twinkie tiramisu” is on the list of 1-star recipes, but it is a bit surprising that it has the lowest calorie count (2 twinkies alone have over 300 calories).

Prep time

Probably, cooks who want to make tiramisu are ready to devote some time to its execution. Counting the preparation time is tricky, however, and the recipes on the website do not all follow the same rules — for example some users calculate the rest time together with the preparation of the dessert. This is the boxplot I obtained without adjusting the minutes.

After removing outliers, I would say a reasonable prepping time is between 60 and 100 minutes.

Number of steps

The average number of steps for preparing tiramisu is 15.77, and the median is 15. So, the average rating by count makes sense.

Users like classic ingredients

The most used ingredients (by count) are the classic ones; there are 9 ingredients on average and the median is 8. The heat map below shows the most common ingredients by count and those that appear at least 20 times.

Ingredients associated with the highest ratings

No brandy, please

Here is a partial list of the ingredients associated with the lowest-rated recipes: sponge cakes, nonfat milk, sugar-free raspberry jam, sugar-free lemon gelatin, bourbon, frozen light whipped dessert topping, unsweetened chocolate, fat-free cream cheese, Splenda sugar substitute, and cognac.

Personally, I would also avoid the fruit.

Reviews

Character count

2-star ratings contain more words and generally more detailed explanations (similar to what I found for pizza, carbonara, and coffee)

Average word count of reviews by rating

Median count of reviews by rating

Upper case words

1-star-rated recipes have more upper-case words, followed by 2-star-rated recipes. This is probably a sign of distress and a shouting-like reaction.

Submission: Year, Months, and Reviews

Recipe submission years were mostly from 2002 until 2008, with most reviews released between 2005 and 2013.

Recipe submission months were quite regular, with an increase in January (like in the previous recipe analyses). I guess there are some seasonal or advertisement-induced peaks affecting visits to the Food.com website.

Conclusion

The most-rated recipes

There are 515 5-star ratings out of 682 total observations in the dataset, and there are 147 unique recipe names. Among these recipes, some have been rated more than others. The recipe simply named “tiramisu” ranked first (130 times).

The least-rated recipes

The 20 tiramisu recipes having the lowest count are below – 16 recipes were rated one time and 4 recipes were rated 2, 3, 5, and 6 times.  I can understand why people might think twice before trying “mixed berry tiramisu with lime curd,” “hot tiramisu drink” or “tiramisu baked oatmeal,” but others on the list such as “the best tiramisu recipe really,” have tempting titles.

The top 3 recipes

Link to the top-ranked recipe simply named “tiramisu”.

Since the dataset was scraped some time ago, the counts and average ratings of recipes might be different from what they are today.

The top-rated recipe has a very simple name, it is very easy to prepare, the ingredients seem reasonably classic, the number of steps, and the prep description are straightforward. One note about the use of liquor Tia Maria in this recipe explains its presence in the previous tree map (count 139); Tia Maria looks like a widely appreciated flavor addition. Probably, coffee liquors add a zing, given that Kahlua liquor as well has been used 167 times in the recipes.

The “tiramisu cupcakes uses cake mix” recipe ranked second and obtained 59 ratings. This recipe lists 7 prep steps; the ingredients simply use a cake mix, a liquid coffee layer, and a mascarpone filling made with Kahlua and condensed milk.

Lemon tiramisu has 37 ratings and is ranked third. It has 11 steps and the preparation basically mixes mascarpone cheese, raw eggs, sugar, lemon curd, and lemon zest. A packet of sponge cake fingers is used to create the layers after they have been soaked in brandy or rum.

Based on the total number of reviews and the average rating, the recipe named simply
“tiramisù” seems like a very good choice — it has been reviewed 130 times and has an average rating of 4.57. Some of the recipes have slightly higher average ratings, but many fewer reviews and therefore might be appealing only to people with special tastes.

Finally, among the top 10 most reviewed recipes, 2 have average ratings below 4.0 — the “Tsr version of Olive Garden tiramisu by Todd Wilbur” and the “Tiramisu trifle”. This is not too surprising. As I found for pizza and carbonara, recipes with the names of restaurants or celebrities in the title often had lower ratings, perhaps because they did not live up to expectations. And, tiramisù trifle just sounds like one step too far.

In case you wonder, here I translated my favorite Tiramisù recipe.