TRUFFLES
THE
LEGEND
“It’s all about sex. It’s all about the aroma on the nose.” Said a chef as he picked the biggest and the best truffle from the pile on his table.
Truffles are not ‘harvested’ or ‘picked’ but are ‘hunted.’
It’s all about the smell and those messages we get because the truffle tuber profligates via its scent and grows underground.
Does that smell evoke such a reaction because we know they are so expensive? Would the ‘swooning’ and the ‘glazed eyes’ seen in folks exist if truffles were the same price as radishes, shallots, walnuts or ginger?
“No!” You say truffles are rare, hard to find, fiercely protected, smuggled, fought over and sometimes killed for.
How did that happen? When did that happen? How did we fall so deeply for a black knobby hard lump of fungus grown underground on a few particular tree roots?
Is it because only the top restaurants, in most luxurious settings, handled by talented and caring chefs, set the stage for love of this tuber?
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As far back as 4,000 years ago Zimri-Lim last ruler of the city of Mari, now Tell Hariri in modern day Syria, left an abundance of clay tablets, with texts from his palace and a letter, which read;
“Ever since I reached Saggaratum five days ago, I have continuously dispatched truffles to my lord. But my lord wrote to me: "You have sent me bad truffles!" But my lord ought not to condemn with regards to these truffles. I have sent my lord what they have picked for me.”
Known both to the Greeks and Romans Theophrastus (371-287 B.C.) wrote on the subject of botany and especially a truffle called misu, which grew near Cyrene in Libya, while the Moorish great Arab physician Avicenna prescribed truffles to patients grown in northern Tunisia, which Romans had colonized making Cathage a major port in the Bay of Hammamet.
Roman Pliny the Elder (23-79) wrote that the most highly valued truffle came from "Africa" which is now modern day Tunisia, north-eastern Algeria and western Libya, all of which needs further investigation and rediscovering.
The Roman’s and the Greeks both loved truffles and thought they were an aphrodisiac, which started as the aroma hit the nose, before being actually eaten.
Theophrastus thought they came from heavy rains combined with a clap of thunder and lightening, while Plutarch suggested they were mud cooked by the lightening, which might sound ridiculous until you realize how incredibly difficult they are to grow.
The word ‘lucallan’ which means luxurious, gourmet and lavish comes from the great Emporrria Lubcullus who loved truffles, was very knowledgeable and a great cultivator of apricots, cherries and Swiss chard on his huge estates in Rome and Naples.
The truffles the ancients enjoyed were described as reddish, white or black and they respected this unpredictable ‘tuber’ alongside other edible rare pungent mushrooms.
After hundreds of years and attempts at cultivation in Périgord, Limousine and most recently California one further understands how they spore spontaneously and only then are ‘sniffed out’ by valuable pigs and dogs.
The truffle then disappears for most of the Middle Ages then reemerges on the tables of the French king Francois 1.
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