Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Volbeban. Here. The truffles, the meaning the delicious fungi,
Speaker 1: not the delicious chocolate, are one of the most expensive
Speaker 1: ingredients on the planet. They're so sought after that the
Speaker 1: treffle hunting business is highly competitive, shockingly cutthroat, and sometimes illicit,
Speaker 1: because truffles are pretty much always foraged, not farmed, and
Speaker 1: it seems that fewer are available every year. So today
Speaker 1: let's talk truffles. The first things First, the truffles in
Speaker 1: question here are fungi. Yes, there are creamy chocolate treats
Speaker 1: that go by the same name, but that's because whoever
Speaker 1: began rolling chocolate ganash into small balls thought that those
Speaker 1: lumpy brown candies looked a little bit like the fung
Speaker 1: gui truffles. The fungi are cousins of mushrooms that grow
Speaker 1: underground instead of above ground. Thus, instead of growing a
Speaker 1: fruiting body with a wide cap so that they can
Speaker 1: release their spores out into the air, they fold in
Speaker 1: on themselves and develop spores inside. They wind up looking
Speaker 1: like a tuber, a sort of potato e. One genus
Speaker 1: of treffles is called tuber. Their flavors can vary depending
Speaker 1: on these species and its growth conditions, of course, but
Speaker 1: they tend to be funky and earthy and savory. Researchers
Speaker 1: have found at least two hundred aroma compounds in truffles,
Speaker 1: and at least thirty seven that directly contribute to the
Speaker 1: highly aromatic white truffles characteristic flavors. More about treffle types later, however,
Speaker 1: the one that all truffles seem to have in common
Speaker 1: is dimethyl sulfide, which is an aroma compound with a
Speaker 1: smell that's been described as funky, earthy and reminiscent of
Speaker 1: rotten cabbage, ripe cheese, and human farts. So there you
Speaker 1: have it. Those aromas are an evolutionary reproduction mechanism. Treffles
Speaker 1: depend on animals like burrowing rodents to eat their fruit
Speaker 1: and poop their spores in a new location in order
Speaker 1: to spread, and since they grow underground, their strong scent
Speaker 1: draws those animals to them. In the past, treffle hunters
Speaker 1: used pigs to track down underground stashes because pigs love
Speaker 1: treffles as much as we do, but dogs are now
Speaker 1: considered the gold standard for the article. This episode is
Speaker 1: based on How Stuff Works. Spoke on the phone with
Speaker 1: Ken Frank, the executive chef and owner of a Napa,
Speaker 1: California restaurant called latouqu which has hosted an annual fresh
Speaker 1: Truffle dinner since nineteen eighty three. He explained the switch
Speaker 1: from pigs to dogs. Quote. First of all, a dog
Speaker 1: makes a great pet that might weigh thirty to forty pounds.
Speaker 1: A pig weighs hundreds of pounds. Imagine shoving a pig
Speaker 1: in the back of your Fiat and driving through the
Speaker 1: foothills of Piamonte. You also have to fight the pig
Speaker 1: for the truffle because it doesn't want to give it up. Originally,
Speaker 1: pigs were used because they don't training, they nowhere to go.
Speaker 1: But dogs have great noses and you can make it
Speaker 1: into a game. The dog doesn't want to eat the treffle,
Speaker 1: It just wants to play the game. It's far more practical.
Speaker 1: Using pigs nowadays is very unusual. Part of why treffles
Speaker 1: are so expensive is that they're more choosy than other
Speaker 1: mushrooms about where they'll grow. The kinds largely used in
Speaker 1: European cuisines are a symbiotic fungus and will only grow
Speaker 1: in unison with the roots of certain types of trees,
Speaker 1: for example pines, beaches, poplars, oaks, and hazels. They steal
Speaker 1: sugar from the tree's roots and in return provide nutrients
Speaker 1: in the soil that the tree can use. So you
Speaker 1: can't just grow treffles the way that you can grow
Speaker 1: other mushrooms in trays of substrate in big vertical indoor farms.
Speaker 1: You have to grow the trees and introduce the fungus
Speaker 1: and just sort of hope that it all works. European
Speaker 1: treffles have traditionally been foraged in smallish regions of France, Spain,
Speaker 1: Italy and Croatia, but they can be grown elsewhere, like
Speaker 1: Australia and New Zealand, parts of North America, Israel and Morocco,
Speaker 1: and Argentina. In Chile. These days, China is a big
Speaker 1: player in the market too. Apparently, trefles from China are
Speaker 1: less flavorful than some European treffles, but resemble them in
Speaker 1: color and so are sometimes fraudulently sold as European treffles,
Speaker 1: sometimes even with synthetic flavoring added. There are hundreds of
Speaker 1: species of treffles. But the three main ones that you'll
Speaker 1: find in European based cuisines, in descending order of strength,
Speaker 1: of flavor, and of expense, are white trefles, which are
Speaker 1: pale all the way through, black trefles, which are dark
Speaker 1: all the way through, and what's called summer trefles, which
Speaker 1: have a dark skin but lighter interior and are harvested
Speaker 1: in the summer, as opposed to white and black treffles,
Speaker 1: which are harvested in fall to winter. All of these
Speaker 1: are in the genus tuber. There are also desert trefles,
Speaker 1: which prefer arid growing conditions and appear throughout appropriate regions
Speaker 1: of Europe, Africa, and Asia. The word trefles may in
Speaker 1: fact come from the Arabic turfas a term for these
Speaker 1: desert species. White trefles are considered the rarest variety, so
Speaker 1: it's no surprise that they cost big bucks. But just
Speaker 1: how big those bucks are might surprise you. We're talking
Speaker 1: three thousand dollars a pound for white treffles from the
Speaker 1: Italian Piedmont. Compare that with nine hundred dollars a pound
Speaker 1: for southwestern France's black trefles. The so called black diamonds.
Speaker 1: A pound is about half a kilo for reference. In
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, the world's largest white trefle on record, weighing
Speaker 1: in at four point one six pounds. That's one point
Speaker 1: eighty eight kilos sold at auction for sixty one thousand,
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty dollars, and that was considered something
Speaker 1: of a bargain. Treffles from lesser known areas are typically cheaper.
Speaker 1: Chinese treffles run about thirty to fifty dollars a pound,
Speaker 1: and varieties found in the US range from around fifty
Speaker 1: to one hundred dollars. Of course, all of this is wholesale.
Speaker 1: In fancy restaurants that stop fresh treffles, you might pay
Speaker 1: a couple hundred bucks for just a few grams, just
Speaker 1: a couple of shavings. All of this is due to
Speaker 1: a few factors. White trefles, especially are hyper seasonal. They
Speaker 1: tend to only grow during a short window from mid
Speaker 1: September through the end of November, and they're becoming more rare.
Speaker 1: Annual harvests of white treffle declined from about two thousand
Speaker 1: tons to just twenty tons over the span of the
Speaker 1: last hundred years. Climate change is contributing to this. In
Speaker 1: regions of Europe where trefles grow, summers are getting drier
Speaker 1: and tuber species of treffles like it damp. They also
Speaker 1: don't store super well. That special aroma is sometimes gone
Speaker 1: within a week. Some restaurants keep their supply in safes,
Speaker 1: as you might suspect from the scarce supply and the
Speaker 1: potential to cash in. Competition in the treffle trade is
Speaker 1: intense and has inspired all kinds of crime. Trefle hunters
Speaker 1: have sabotaged rivals cars by slashing tie and planting spikes
Speaker 1: and dirt roads, or even kidnapping and ransoming rivals dogs.
Speaker 1: In France, the trefle season means increased police roadblocks. In
Speaker 1: twenty ten, a treffle shortage there resulted in a spree
Speaker 1: of truffle crimes. There were raids on farms and armed
Speaker 1: robberies of traders. In twenty twelve, robbers got away with
Speaker 1: sixty thousand dollars worth of product from an Italian warehouse
Speaker 1: owned by the world's largest treffle supplier. Treffle hunters keep
Speaker 1: their hunting ground secret. Passing down the location from generation
Speaker 1: to generation sometimes is a deathbed revelation. At this point,
Speaker 1: you might be wondering what in the world the big
Speaker 1: deal is. I mean, sure, trefles are rare, but is
Speaker 1: there flavor really that special? According to the pros uh yep,
Speaker 1: but Frank said, it's hard to describe the flavor. It's
Speaker 1: not just that it's earthy or pungent, but to me,
Speaker 1: it's also primal. It's more than just the flavor. This
Speaker 1: smell reaches inside you and it's really compelling and really
Speaker 1: grabs you and makes you pay attention, whether you like
Speaker 1: it or not. However, and I hate to break it
Speaker 1: to you, but treffle flavored products that do not contain
Speaker 1: actual fresh bits of fungus are made with imitation flavorings
Speaker 1: that are produced in labs. That means that packaged products
Speaker 1: like your favorite treuffle oil, salt or honey has never
Speaker 1: seen the real thing. We have those products thanks to
Speaker 1: Italian chemists who isolated one of the treffles operative flavor
Speaker 1: compounds in the nineteen seventies, and you can find canned
Speaker 1: or frozen truffles. But unfortunately for those of us without
Speaker 1: the funds, aficionados insist that fresh is more subtle and
Speaker 1: world's better than the imitations. Interestingly, when scientists mapped the
Speaker 1: black treffle's genome, they found that one of the proteins
Speaker 1: that contributes to the fungi's smell is androstenol, a steroidal
Speaker 1: pheromone found in human men's under arm sweat. It's also
Speaker 1: found in the saliva of male pigs, so researchers got
Speaker 1: to wondering whether that's why female pigs were so good
Speaker 1: at rooting treffles out. But tests showed that female pigs
Speaker 1: aren't just looking for that pheromone. In a study using
Speaker 1: real trefles, the synthetic scent, and just the pheromone, the
Speaker 1: researchers found that pigs will go for the real or
Speaker 1: synthetic treffle smells, but they'll ignore the pheromone alone. Maybe
Speaker 1: like us, pigs just dig treffles. But whether you can
Speaker 1: enjoy them fresh, you love your lab created truffle oil,
Speaker 1: or you can't stand the stuff in any case, If
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about treffle crime, there's a
Speaker 1: book that was published in twenty nineteen by one Ryan
Speaker 1: Jacobs that's got you covered. It's called The Truffle Underground,
Speaker 1: A Tale of Mystery, mayhem, and manipulation in the shadowy
Speaker 1: market of the world's most expensive fungus. Today's episode is
Speaker 1: based on the article Treffles, the rarest and most exten
Speaker 1: and so of fungi in the World on how stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot Com, written by Michelle Constantinovski. Brain Stuff is production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is
Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
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