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In Brief
- The truffles that appear on restaurant menus and on the shelves of luxury food purveyors represent only a small fraction of the world’s truffle species.
- Truffles figure importantly in ecosystems, sustaining both plants and animals.
- Recognition of the ecological significance of truffles is aiding efforts to conserve threatened species that depend on them.
It’s a cool November day near Bologna, Italy. We are strolling through the woods with truffle hunter Mirko Illice and his little dog, Clinto. Clinto runs back and forth among the oak trees sniffing the ground, pausing, then running again. Suddenly, he stops and begins to dig furiously with both paws. “Ah, he’s found an Italian white truffle,” Mirko explains. “He uses both paws only when he finds one of those.” Mirko gently pulls the excited dog from the spot and pushes through the soil with his fingers. He extracts a yellowish brown lump the size of a golf ball and sniffs it. “Benissimo, Clinto,” Mirko intones. Though not the finest example of the species, Tuber magnatum—which grows only in northern Italy, Serbia and Croatia—Clinto’s find will fetch a nice price of about $50 at the Saturday market.
Throughout history, truffles have appeared on the menu and in folklore. The Pharaoh Khufu served them at his royal table. Bedouins, Kalahari Bushmen and Australian Aborigines have hunted them for countless generations in deserts. The Romans savored them and thought they were produced by thunder.
This article was originally published with the title The Hidden Life of Truffles.
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5 Comments
Add CommentNot just for gourmands? Don't you mean gourmets??
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot necessarily, since a gourmand is a person who takes great pleasure in food.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisApparently there is a raging debate about the difference between a gourmet and a gourmand (google it), with some people asserting that the words in recent usage have come to mean the same thing. This article was the first time I've noticed it used where it does connote gluttony. To the extent that there is any difference in meaning, the choice of the word "gourmand" instead of "gourmet" in the context of truffles seems odd to me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think the difference is that a gourmet has an equal interest in the preparation of food in a variety of ways. The gourmand enjoys the consumption for the tastes that are pleasing and extraordinary. Neither is a glutton, unless it is in addition to their other interest. A wine maker and a wine aficianado (oenophile) are comparable - and a wino is the equivalent of the glutton. That's your ESL lesson for today!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScience has once again trumped one of my mothers greatest tenets; that is, one should never s#@t where one also eats...
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