August 21, 2025 • 10 mins
Truffles are fungi that grow underground, are almost exclusively foraged, and taste best extremely fresh. Learn about truffle biology, truffle flavoring, and truffle crime in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://recipes.howstuffworks.com/truffles.htm
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren Volbeban. Here. The truffles, the meaning the delicious fungi,
not the delicious chocolate, are one of the most expensive
ingredients on the planet. They're so sought after that the
treffle hunting business is highly competitive, shockingly cutthroat, and sometimes illicit,
(00:27):
because truffles are pretty much always foraged, not farmed, and
it seems that fewer are available every year. So today
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
(00:49):
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
(01:10):
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
(01:30):
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
(01:52):
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
(02:12):
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
(02:36):
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,
(02:58):
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
(03:18):
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
(03:41):
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
(04:01):
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
(04:24):
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,
(04:45):
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
(05:08):
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
(05:30):
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,
(05:51):
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
(06:12):
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
(06:33):
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
(06:57):
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
(07:20):
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
(07:43):
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
(08:06):
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
(08:28):
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
(08:49):
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
(09:11):
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,
(09:33):
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
(09:57):
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.
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren Volbeban. Here. The truffles, the meaning the delicious fungi,
not the delicious chocolate, are one of the most expensive
ingredients on the planet. They're so sought after that the
treffle hunting business is highly competitive, shockingly cutthroat, and sometimes illicit,
(00:27):
because truffles are pretty much always foraged, not farmed, and
it seems that fewer are available every year. So today
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
(00:49):
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
(01:10):
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
(01:30):
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
(01:52):
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
(02:12):
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
(02:36):
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,
(02:58):
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
(03:18):
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
(03:41):
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
(04:01):
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
(04:24):
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,
(04:45):
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
(05:08):
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
(05:30):
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,
(05:51):
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
(06:12):
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
(06:33):
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
(06:57):
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
(07:20):
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
(07:43):
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
(08:06):
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
(08:28):
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
(08:49):
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
(09:11):
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,
(09:33):
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
(09:57):
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.
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