Truffles: A few basics

This information refers to the wild mushroom that grows underground, especially fresh versions. The meaning of "truffles" commercially has widened in recent years, somewhat fashionably, and after encountering confusion I wrote these notes for reference.

I'm not in the truffle business, nor any other role of advocacy about them. I have bought and cooked with them for a couple of decades (since discussing it with Steve Upstill in the 1980s, soon after he created this newsgroup but before either of us had dealt with truffles fresh); have tasted them longer; grew up with them (another story). Also my father, a mycofanatic, tried to persuade me to go in on some inoculated French trees about 1980 in the hope of adding black truffles to his rural mushroom resources, more on this below. (He did buy mushroom rights to neighboring land, cheap; and I helped him inject fallen oaks on his land with shiitake spores at that time, very successfully.) Here is information from experience and literature.

1. The truffles in the existing cookbooks, in lore, stuffed into Filet of Beef Strasbourgeoise, shaved over risotto, mentioned by Brillat-Savarin, gushed about by Paula Wolfert, missed ("truffles baked in the ashes") by Liebling's friend Yves Mirande (ISBN 086547236X); the truffles of which Colette, I think, warned that "those who would live virtuous lives had best avoid them" -- these truffles were the French black truffle (of PŽrigord and elsewhere), Tuber melanosporum; or the Italian white (Piedmont) truffle, Tuber magnatum. Their seasons have always been limited, basically parts of fall-winter, weather-dependent. They grow in synergy with certain trees. These clbuttic truffle types are extremely intense flavor and scent agents, comparable in strength to garlic, and the black takes well to cooking. (Imagine if garlic were very rare. Its price would go up.)

2. I was paying equivalent to $500 per kilogram for fresh black truffles at US retail in 1985, and they have gone up to a few times that, on average. The Piedmont truffles were more expensive. F. Picart cites the important information, often overlooked, that worldwide production shrank drastically for various reasons, including world wars in truffle country, from 2000 tons annually in 1900 to 100 tons in 1980 (half of that from France) for the black truffle (T. melanosporum). At the same time of course, worldwide population and demand grew. This is why in the older cookbooks, before say 1950, you often see recipes asking for hundreds of grams, or using these truffles as vegetables. That would have been already expensive then, but cost circa $1000 today.

3. For decades, mushroom books have advised that contrary to popular buttumption, certain truffle species appear commonly in such places as North America (in their usual underground synergy with certain trees, and moisture) but these often lack flavor interest. The point was underscored in the 1980s in an episode where some people found wild truffles in a forested part of the San Francisco Bay Area, made a fuss, imported a truffle-hunting hound, and were then disappointed when the fungi were relatively flavorless, very unlike the famous European white and black.

4. In recent years, especially with the prices of the clbuttic truffles, nontraditional species have been coming onto market. These are much less expensive and much less flavorful and aromatic, though still interesting. They include the "Oregon white" (Tuber oregonense, "previously T. gibbosum") with a pleasant wild-mushroom aroma and flavor, though not clasically truffly in my experience; and the "Summer truffle" (Tuber aestivum, occasionally spelled aestium or aestiuum.) The Summer truffle "has a relatively light perfume, but mimics the black truffle with its black exterior and its off-white interior." In my experience the interior was obviously different from a black truffle's: translucent when cooked, closer to an ordinary mushroom. The interior, or meat (gleba) of T. melanosporum is distinctive: Light-colored canals surrounding pockets (asci) of the black spores -- thus "melanosporum," black-spored.

5. Though useful, these newer products are distinct from and much subtler than traditional "truffles" as the phrase was used in most recipes. This is important if you look for ideas for cooking them. The name "Summer truffle" has actively confused some people: it does not mean a truffle of the famous species, available somehow fresh in summer. It is a different mushroom. Unfortunately my first few encounters several years ago with the "Summer truffle" did not use it on its merits, but marketed it in ways very easily confused with black truffles. (Consumer beware.)

6. Cultivation of clbuttic species. Historically, they were considered fundamentally wild, incapable of cultivation (like some above-ground mushrooms). Research on cultivation of T. melanosporum under INRA (Insbreastute de Recherche Agronomique, France) from 1966, and some success with a process, led in the 1970s to the commercial organization Agri-Truffe, which launched overseas enterprises including "Agri-Truffle" in the US and Australia in the 1980s, selling trees mycorrhized with European T. melanosporum. (This was the operation that got my father's attention in 1980.) Plantings exist in parts of the US now. (A peculiarity of T. melanosporum, unlike some other truffle species, is that it suppresses other plants and weeds nearby, causing a distinctive clearing or "burn-out" between the trees.)

7. If anyone interested in truffles and food has not read Wechsberg's little book Blue Trout and Black Truffles, I strongly recommend it. (Originally published 1953, reprinted in 1985 paperback by Academy Chicago, ISBN 0897331346, readily available new or used via amazon.com or elsewhere.) Wechsberg was a traveling food writer who interviewed remarkable people, including Fernand Point whom he helped to popularize in the US, and Charles Barbier, a French truffle expert. The value of the book is partly in the storytelling. ("I'm disconsolate, Herr Hofrat ...")

Hope this is useful. The first few references to "truffles" on this newsgroup in the 1980s, by the way, were to chocolate "truffles," which had recently become popular then. As nontraditional species of truffle became, 20 years later.

-- M. Hauser