Why Are Truffles So Expensive?

let's talk truffles. The first things First, the truffles in question here are fungi. Yes, there are creamy chocolate treats that go by the same name, but that's because whoever began rolling chocolate ganash into small balls thought that those lumpy brown candies looked a little bit like the fung gui truffles. The fungi are cousins of mushrooms that grow

underground instead of above ground. Thus, instead of growing a fruiting body with a wide cap so that they can release their spores out into the air, they fold in on themselves and develop spores inside. They wind up looking like a tuber, a sort of potato e. One genus of treffles is called tuber. Their flavors can vary depending on these species and its growth conditions, of course, but

they tend to be funky and earthy and savory. Researchers have found at least two hundred aroma compounds in truffles, and at least thirty seven that directly contribute to the highly aromatic white truffles characteristic flavors. More about treffle types later, however, the one that all truffles seem to have in common is dimethyl sulfide, which is an aroma compound with a smell that's been described as funky, earthy and reminiscent of rotten cabbage, ripe cheese, and human farts. So there you

have it. Those aromas are an evolutionary reproduction mechanism. Treffles depend on animals like burrowing rodents to eat their fruit and poop their spores in a new location in order to spread, and since they grow underground, their strong scent draws those animals to them. In the past, treffle hunters used pigs to track down underground stashes because pigs love treffles as much as we do, but dogs are now considered the gold standard for the article. This episode is

based on How Stuff Works. Spoke on the phone with Ken Frank, the executive chef and owner of a Napa, California restaurant called latouqu which has hosted an annual fresh Truffle dinner since nineteen eighty three. He explained the switch from pigs to dogs. Quote. First of all, a dog makes a great pet that might weigh thirty to forty pounds. A pig weighs hundreds of pounds. Imagine shoving a pig in the back of your Fiat and driving through the

foothills of Piamonte. You also have to fight the pig for the truffle because it doesn't want to give it up. Originally, pigs were used because they don't training, they nowhere to go. But dogs have great noses and you can make it into a game. The dog doesn't want to eat the treffle, It just wants to play the game. It's far more practical. Using pigs nowadays is very unusual. Part of why treffles are so expensive is that they're more choosy than other

mushrooms about where they'll grow. The kinds largely used in European cuisines are a symbiotic fungus and will only grow in unison with the roots of certain types of trees, for example pines, beaches, poplars, oaks, and hazels. They steal sugar from the tree's roots and in return provide nutrients in the soil that the tree can use. So you can't just grow treffles the way that you can grow other mushrooms in trays of substrate in big vertical indoor farms.

You have to grow the trees and introduce the fungus and just sort of hope that it all works. European treffles have traditionally been foraged in smallish regions of France, Spain, Italy and Croatia, but they can be grown elsewhere, like Australia and New Zealand, parts of North America, Israel and Morocco, and Argentina. In Chile. These days, China is a big

player in the market too. Apparently, trefles from China are less flavorful than some European treffles, but resemble them in color and so are sometimes fraudulently sold as European treffles, sometimes even with synthetic flavoring added. There are hundreds of

species of treffles. But the three main ones that you'll find in European based cuisines, in descending order of strength, of flavor, and of expense, are white trefles, which are pale all the way through, black trefles, which are dark all the way through, and what's called summer trefles, which have a dark skin but lighter interior and are harvested in the summer, as opposed to white and black treffles, which are harvested in fall to winter. All of these

are in the genus tuber. There are also desert trefles, which prefer arid growing conditions and appear throughout appropriate regions of Europe, Africa, and Asia. The word trefles may in fact come from the Arabic turfas a term for these desert species. White trefles are considered the rarest variety, so it's no surprise that they cost big bucks. But just how big those bucks are might surprise you. We're talking three thousand dollars a pound for white treffles from the

Italian Piedmont. Compare that with nine hundred dollars a pound for southwestern France's black trefles. The so called black diamonds. A pound is about half a kilo for reference. In twenty sixteen, the world's largest white trefle on record, weighing in at four point one six pounds. That's one point eighty eight kilos sold at auction for sixty one thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars, and that was considered something of a bargain. Treffles from lesser known areas are typically cheaper.

Chinese treffles run about thirty to fifty dollars a pound, and varieties found in the US range from around fifty to one hundred dollars. Of course, all of this is wholesale. In fancy restaurants that stop fresh treffles, you might pay a couple hundred bucks for just a few grams, just a couple of shavings. All of this is due to

a few factors. White trefles, especially are hyper seasonal. They tend to only grow during a short window from mid September through the end of November, and they're becoming more rare. Annual harvests of white treffle declined from about two thousand tons to just twenty tons over the span of the last hundred years. Climate change is contributing to this. In regions of Europe where trefles grow, summers are getting drier and tuber species of treffles like it damp. They also

don't store super well. That special aroma is sometimes gone within a week. Some restaurants keep their supply in safes, as you might suspect from the scarce supply and the potential to cash in. Competition in the treffle trade is intense and has inspired all kinds of crime. Trefle hunters have sabotaged rivals cars by slashing tie and planting spikes and dirt roads, or even kidnapping and ransoming rivals dogs.

In France, the trefle season means increased police roadblocks. In twenty ten, a treffle shortage there resulted in a spree of truffle crimes. There were raids on farms and armed robberies of traders. In twenty twelve, robbers got away with sixty thousand dollars worth of product from an Italian warehouse owned by the world's largest treffle supplier. Treffle hunters keep their hunting ground secret. Passing down the location from generation

to generation sometimes is a deathbed revelation. At this point, you might be wondering what in the world the big deal is. I mean, sure, trefles are rare, but is there flavor really that special? According to the pros uh yep, but Frank said, it's hard to describe the flavor. It's not just that it's earthy or pungent, but to me,

it's also primal. It's more than just the flavor. This smell reaches inside you and it's really compelling and really grabs you and makes you pay attention, whether you like it or not. However, and I hate to break it to you, but treffle flavored products that do not contain actual fresh bits of fungus are made with imitation flavorings that are produced in labs. That means that packaged products like your favorite treuffle oil, salt or honey has never

seen the real thing. We have those products thanks to Italian chemists who isolated one of the treffles operative flavor compounds in the nineteen seventies, and you can find canned or frozen truffles. But unfortunately for those of us without the funds, aficionados insist that fresh is more subtle and

world's better than the imitations. Interestingly, when scientists mapped the black treffle's genome, they found that one of the proteins that contributes to the fungi's smell is androstenol, a steroidal pheromone found in human men's under arm sweat. It's also found in the saliva of male pigs, so researchers got to wondering whether that's why female pigs were so good at rooting treffles out. But tests showed that female pigs

aren't just looking for that pheromone. In a study using real trefles, the synthetic scent, and just the pheromone, the researchers found that pigs will go for the real or synthetic treffle smells, but they'll ignore the pheromone alone. Maybe

like us, pigs just dig treffles. But whether you can enjoy them fresh, you love your lab created truffle oil, or you can't stand the stuff in any case, If you want to learn more about treffle crime, there's a book that was published in twenty nineteen by one Ryan Jacobs that's got you covered. It's called The Truffle Underground, A Tale of Mystery, mayhem, and manipulation in the shadowy

market of the world's most expensive fungus. Today's episode is based on the article Treffles, the rarest and most exten and so of fungi in the World on how stuffworks dot Com, written by Michelle Constantinovski. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.