WEBVTT - Why Are Truffles So Expensive? 0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:07.640 Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff, 0:00:07.680 --> 0:00:12.799 Lauren Volbeban. Here. The truffles, the meaning the delicious fungi, 0:00:13.039 --> 0:00:16.520 not the delicious chocolate, are one of the most expensive 0:00:16.680 --> 0:00:20.799 ingredients on the planet. They're so sought after that the 0:00:20.880 --> 0:00:26.360 treffle hunting business is highly competitive, shockingly cutthroat, and sometimes illicit, 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:31.920 because truffles are pretty much always foraged, not farmed, and 0:00:32.159 --> 0:00:36.839 it seems that fewer are available every year. So today 0:00:37.240 --> 0:00:41.920 let's talk truffles. The first things First, the truffles in 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:46.479 question here are fungi. Yes, there are creamy chocolate treats 0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:49.200 that go by the same name, but that's because whoever 0:00:49.280 --> 0:00:52.639 began rolling chocolate ganash into small balls thought that those 0:00:52.680 --> 0:00:55.080 lumpy brown candies looked a little bit like the fung 0:00:55.120 --> 0:00:59.920 gui truffles. The fungi are cousins of mushrooms that grow 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:04.520 underground instead of above ground. Thus, instead of growing a 0:01:04.560 --> 0:01:07.000 fruiting body with a wide cap so that they can 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:10.000 release their spores out into the air, they fold in 0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:14.559 on themselves and develop spores inside. They wind up looking 0:01:14.600 --> 0:01:17.880 like a tuber, a sort of potato e. One genus 0:01:17.920 --> 0:01:22.319 of treffles is called tuber. Their flavors can vary depending 0:01:22.360 --> 0:01:25.399 on these species and its growth conditions, of course, but 0:01:25.520 --> 0:01:30.240 they tend to be funky and earthy and savory. Researchers 0:01:30.240 --> 0:01:33.160 have found at least two hundred aroma compounds in truffles, 0:01:33.400 --> 0:01:36.399 and at least thirty seven that directly contribute to the 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:42.600 highly aromatic white truffles characteristic flavors. More about treffle types later, however, 0:01:42.920 --> 0:01:45.160 the one that all truffles seem to have in common 0:01:45.440 --> 0:01:48.840 is dimethyl sulfide, which is an aroma compound with a 0:01:48.880 --> 0:01:52.120 smell that's been described as funky, earthy and reminiscent of 0:01:52.240 --> 0:01:57.240 rotten cabbage, ripe cheese, and human farts. So there you 0:01:57.280 --> 0:02:03.160 have it. Those aromas are an evolutionary reproduction mechanism. Treffles 0:02:03.240 --> 0:02:06.280 depend on animals like burrowing rodents to eat their fruit 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:09.079 and poop their spores in a new location in order 0:02:09.120 --> 0:02:12.520 to spread, and since they grow underground, their strong scent 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:17.160 draws those animals to them. In the past, treffle hunters 0:02:17.240 --> 0:02:20.720 used pigs to track down underground stashes because pigs love 0:02:20.760 --> 0:02:23.360 treffles as much as we do, but dogs are now 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:27.200 considered the gold standard for the article. This episode is 0:02:27.240 --> 0:02:29.320 based on How Stuff Works. Spoke on the phone with 0:02:29.400 --> 0:02:32.280 Ken Frank, the executive chef and owner of a Napa, 0:02:32.280 --> 0:02:36.040 California restaurant called latouqu which has hosted an annual fresh 0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:40.000 Truffle dinner since nineteen eighty three. He explained the switch 0:02:40.040 --> 0:02:43.680 from pigs to dogs. Quote. First of all, a dog 0:02:43.760 --> 0:02:46.680 makes a great pet that might weigh thirty to forty pounds. 0:02:47.000 --> 0:02:49.800 A pig weighs hundreds of pounds. Imagine shoving a pig 0:02:49.840 --> 0:02:51.600 in the back of your Fiat and driving through the 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:55.360 foothills of Piamonte. You also have to fight the pig 0:02:55.400 --> 0:02:58.680 for the truffle because it doesn't want to give it up. Originally, 0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:02.280 pigs were used because they don't training, they nowhere to go. 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:05.040 But dogs have great noses and you can make it 0:03:05.040 --> 0:03:07.640 into a game. The dog doesn't want to eat the treffle, 0:03:07.760 --> 0:03:10.560 It just wants to play the game. It's far more practical. 0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:16.040 Using pigs nowadays is very unusual. Part of why treffles 0:03:16.040 --> 0:03:18.720 are so expensive is that they're more choosy than other 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:22.800 mushrooms about where they'll grow. The kinds largely used in 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:26.400 European cuisines are a symbiotic fungus and will only grow 0:03:26.440 --> 0:03:29.079 in unison with the roots of certain types of trees, 0:03:29.520 --> 0:03:34.359 for example pines, beaches, poplars, oaks, and hazels. They steal 0:03:34.400 --> 0:03:37.920 sugar from the tree's roots and in return provide nutrients 0:03:37.960 --> 0:03:41.360 in the soil that the tree can use. So you 0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:43.600 can't just grow treffles the way that you can grow 0:03:43.640 --> 0:03:47.480 other mushrooms in trays of substrate in big vertical indoor farms. 0:03:47.920 --> 0:03:50.640 You have to grow the trees and introduce the fungus 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:54.240 and just sort of hope that it all works. European 0:03:54.280 --> 0:03:58.240 treffles have traditionally been foraged in smallish regions of France, Spain, 0:03:58.360 --> 0:04:01.800 Italy and Croatia, but they can be grown elsewhere, like 0:04:01.840 --> 0:04:05.320 Australia and New Zealand, parts of North America, Israel and Morocco, 0:04:05.520 --> 0:04:09.520 and Argentina. In Chile. These days, China is a big 0:04:09.520 --> 0:04:12.680 player in the market too. Apparently, trefles from China are 0:04:12.760 --> 0:04:15.920 less flavorful than some European treffles, but resemble them in 0:04:15.960 --> 0:04:19.840 color and so are sometimes fraudulently sold as European treffles, 0:04:20.160 --> 0:04:24.680 sometimes even with synthetic flavoring added. There are hundreds of 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:27.080 species of treffles. But the three main ones that you'll 0:04:27.120 --> 0:04:30.560 find in European based cuisines, in descending order of strength, 0:04:30.600 --> 0:04:34.279 of flavor, and of expense, are white trefles, which are 0:04:34.320 --> 0:04:37.440 pale all the way through, black trefles, which are dark 0:04:37.480 --> 0:04:40.320 all the way through, and what's called summer trefles, which 0:04:40.360 --> 0:04:43.640 have a dark skin but lighter interior and are harvested 0:04:43.720 --> 0:04:45.880 in the summer, as opposed to white and black treffles, 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:48.640 which are harvested in fall to winter. All of these 0:04:48.680 --> 0:04:52.440 are in the genus tuber. There are also desert trefles, 0:04:52.520 --> 0:04:56.359 which prefer arid growing conditions and appear throughout appropriate regions 0:04:56.400 --> 0:05:00.400 of Europe, Africa, and Asia. The word trefles may in 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:03.560 fact come from the Arabic turfas a term for these 0:05:03.600 --> 0:05:08.640 desert species. White trefles are considered the rarest variety, so 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:12.280 it's no surprise that they cost big bucks. But just 0:05:12.400 --> 0:05:15.960 how big those bucks are might surprise you. We're talking 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:18.960 three thousand dollars a pound for white treffles from the 0:05:19.000 --> 0:05:22.520 Italian Piedmont. Compare that with nine hundred dollars a pound 0:05:22.560 --> 0:05:26.279 for southwestern France's black trefles. The so called black diamonds. 0:05:26.600 --> 0:05:30.000 A pound is about half a kilo for reference. In 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:33.839 twenty sixteen, the world's largest white trefle on record, weighing 0:05:33.880 --> 0:05:36.719 in at four point one six pounds. That's one point 0:05:36.720 --> 0:05:40.000 eighty eight kilos sold at auction for sixty one thousand, 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:44.440 two hundred and fifty dollars, and that was considered something 0:05:44.480 --> 0:05:48.680 of a bargain. Treffles from lesser known areas are typically cheaper. 0:05:48.880 --> 0:05:51.400 Chinese treffles run about thirty to fifty dollars a pound, 0:05:51.520 --> 0:05:54.159 and varieties found in the US range from around fifty 0:05:54.160 --> 0:05:58.080 to one hundred dollars. Of course, all of this is wholesale. 0:05:58.520 --> 0:06:01.560 In fancy restaurants that stop fresh treffles, you might pay 0:06:01.560 --> 0:06:04.120 a couple hundred bucks for just a few grams, just 0:06:04.160 --> 0:06:07.560 a couple of shavings. All of this is due to 0:06:07.600 --> 0:06:12.160 a few factors. White trefles, especially are hyper seasonal. They 0:06:12.240 --> 0:06:14.760 tend to only grow during a short window from mid 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:18.720 September through the end of November, and they're becoming more rare. 0:06:19.360 --> 0:06:22.600 Annual harvests of white treffle declined from about two thousand 0:06:22.640 --> 0:06:25.240 tons to just twenty tons over the span of the 0:06:25.279 --> 0:06:30.040 last hundred years. Climate change is contributing to this. In 0:06:30.120 --> 0:06:33.400 regions of Europe where trefles grow, summers are getting drier 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:37.240 and tuber species of treffles like it damp. They also 0:06:37.320 --> 0:06:41.120 don't store super well. That special aroma is sometimes gone 0:06:41.160 --> 0:06:45.000 within a week. Some restaurants keep their supply in safes, 0:06:46.360 --> 0:06:49.359 as you might suspect from the scarce supply and the 0:06:49.360 --> 0:06:52.640 potential to cash in. Competition in the treffle trade is 0:06:52.720 --> 0:06:57.000 intense and has inspired all kinds of crime. Trefle hunters 0:06:57.040 --> 0:07:01.279 have sabotaged rivals cars by slashing tie and planting spikes 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:05.039 and dirt roads, or even kidnapping and ransoming rivals dogs. 0:07:06.200 --> 0:07:10.120 In France, the trefle season means increased police roadblocks. In 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:13.040 twenty ten, a treffle shortage there resulted in a spree 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:16.520 of truffle crimes. There were raids on farms and armed 0:07:16.600 --> 0:07:20.840 robberies of traders. In twenty twelve, robbers got away with 0:07:20.880 --> 0:07:24.040 sixty thousand dollars worth of product from an Italian warehouse 0:07:24.120 --> 0:07:28.280 owned by the world's largest treffle supplier. Treffle hunters keep 0:07:28.320 --> 0:07:31.880 their hunting ground secret. Passing down the location from generation 0:07:31.960 --> 0:07:37.800 to generation sometimes is a deathbed revelation. At this point, 0:07:37.880 --> 0:07:40.440 you might be wondering what in the world the big 0:07:40.480 --> 0:07:43.480 deal is. I mean, sure, trefles are rare, but is 0:07:43.520 --> 0:07:48.840 there flavor really that special? According to the pros uh yep, 0:07:50.000 --> 0:07:53.160 but Frank said, it's hard to describe the flavor. It's 0:07:53.200 --> 0:07:56.120 not just that it's earthy or pungent, but to me, 0:07:56.360 --> 0:07:59.760 it's also primal. It's more than just the flavor. This 0:08:00.000 --> 0:08:03.239 smell reaches inside you and it's really compelling and really 0:08:03.320 --> 0:08:06.080 grabs you and makes you pay attention, whether you like 0:08:06.160 --> 0:08:09.840 it or not. However, and I hate to break it 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:12.760 to you, but treffle flavored products that do not contain 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:17.440 actual fresh bits of fungus are made with imitation flavorings 0:08:17.480 --> 0:08:21.240 that are produced in labs. That means that packaged products 0:08:21.280 --> 0:08:24.600 like your favorite treuffle oil, salt or honey has never 0:08:24.640 --> 0:08:28.160 seen the real thing. We have those products thanks to 0:08:28.240 --> 0:08:31.360 Italian chemists who isolated one of the treffles operative flavor 0:08:31.400 --> 0:08:35.199 compounds in the nineteen seventies, and you can find canned 0:08:35.240 --> 0:08:38.920 or frozen truffles. But unfortunately for those of us without 0:08:38.960 --> 0:08:43.160 the funds, aficionados insist that fresh is more subtle and 0:08:43.280 --> 0:08:49.080 world's better than the imitations. Interestingly, when scientists mapped the 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:52.160 black treffle's genome, they found that one of the proteins 0:08:52.160 --> 0:08:56.120 that contributes to the fungi's smell is androstenol, a steroidal 0:08:56.160 --> 0:09:00.320 pheromone found in human men's under arm sweat. It's also 0:09:00.360 --> 0:09:04.400 found in the saliva of male pigs, so researchers got 0:09:04.400 --> 0:09:07.080 to wondering whether that's why female pigs were so good 0:09:07.080 --> 0:09:11.080 at rooting treffles out. But tests showed that female pigs 0:09:11.120 --> 0:09:14.800 aren't just looking for that pheromone. In a study using 0:09:14.920 --> 0:09:18.600 real trefles, the synthetic scent, and just the pheromone, the 0:09:18.640 --> 0:09:21.319 researchers found that pigs will go for the real or 0:09:21.360 --> 0:09:25.960 synthetic treffle smells, but they'll ignore the pheromone alone. Maybe 0:09:26.200 --> 0:09:30.640 like us, pigs just dig treffles. But whether you can 0:09:30.800 --> 0:09:33.800 enjoy them fresh, you love your lab created truffle oil, 0:09:33.920 --> 0:09:36.360 or you can't stand the stuff in any case, If 0:09:36.400 --> 0:09:39.000 you want to learn more about treffle crime, there's a 0:09:39.040 --> 0:09:41.559 book that was published in twenty nineteen by one Ryan 0:09:41.679 --> 0:09:45.680 Jacobs that's got you covered. It's called The Truffle Underground, 0:09:45.840 --> 0:09:49.280 A Tale of Mystery, mayhem, and manipulation in the shadowy 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:57.400 market of the world's most expensive fungus. Today's episode is 0:09:57.400 --> 0:09:59.960 based on the article Treffles, the rarest and most exten 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:02.160 and so of fungi in the World on how stuffworks 0:10:02.160 --> 0:10:05.680 dot Com, written by Michelle Constantinovski. Brain Stuff is production 0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:08.360 of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:11.600 produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, 0:10:11.880 --> 0:10:15.000 visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen 0:10:15.040 --> 0:10:16.079 to your favorite shows.