A truffle is the fruiting body of a subterranean ascomycete fungus, predominantly one of the many species of the genus Tuber. In addition to Tuber, over one hundred other genera of fungi are classified as truffles including Geopora, Peziza, Choiromyces, and Leucangium. These genera belong to the class Pezizomycetes and the Pezizales order. Several truffle-like basidiomycetes are excluded from Pezizales, including Rhizopogon and Glomus. Truffles are ectomycorrhizal fungi, so they are usually found in close association with tree roots. Spore dispersal is accomplished through fungivores, animals that eat fungi. These fungi have significant ecological roles in nutrient cycling and drought tolerance.
Some truffle species are highly prized as food. French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin called truffles "the diamond of the kitchen". Edible truffles are used in Italian, French and numerous other national . Truffles are cultivated and harvested from natural environments.
History
Antiquity
The first mention of truffles appears in the inscriptions of the neo-Sumerians regarding their Amorite enemy's eating habits (Third Dynasty of Ur, 20th century BCE) and later in writings of Theophrastus in the 4th century BCE. In classical times, their origins were a mystery that challenged many; Plutarch and others thought them to be the result of lightning, warmth, and water in the soil, while Juvenal thought thunder and rain to be instrumental in their origin. Cicero deemed them children of the earth, while Dioscorides thought they were tuberous roots.
Rome and Thracia in the Classical period identified three kinds of truffles: Tuber melanosporum, T. magnificus, and T. magnatum. The Romans instead used a variety of fungus called terfez, also sometimes called a "desert truffle". Terfez used in Rome came from Lesbos, Carthage, and especially Libya, where the coastal climate was less dry in ancient times. Their substance is pale, tinged with rose. Unlike truffles, terfez have little inherent flavour. The Romans used the terfez as a flavour carrier because the terfez tends to absorb surrounding flavours. Because Ancient Roman cuisine used many spices and flavourings, the terfez may have been appropriate in that context.
Middle Ages
Truffles were rarely used during the Middle Ages. Truffle hunting is mentioned by Bartolomeo Platina, the papal historian, in 1481, when he recorded that the sows of Notza were without equal in hunting truffles, but they should be muzzled to prevent them from eating the prize.
Renaissance and modernity
During the Renaissance, truffles regained popularity in Europe and were honoured at the court of King Francis I of France. They were popular in Parisian markets in the 1780s, imported seasonally from truffle grounds, where peasants had long enjoyed them. Brillat-Savarin (1825) noted that they were so expensive they appeared only at the dinner tables of great nobles and kept women. They were sometimes served with turkey.
Cultivation
Truffles long eluded techniques of domestication, as Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1825) noted:
The most learned men have sought to ascertain the secret and fancied they discovered the seed. Their promises, however, were vain, and no planting was ever followed by a harvest. This perhaps is all right, for as one of the great values of truffles is their dearness, perhaps they would be less highly esteemed if they were cheaper.
Truffles can be cultivated. As early as 1808, attempts to cultivate truffles, known in French as , were successful. People had long observed that truffles were growing among the roots of certain trees, and in 1808, Joseph Talon, from Apt ( of Vaucluse) in southern France, had the idea of transplanting some seedlings that he had collected at the foot of oak trees known to host truffles in their root system.
For discovering how to cultivate truffles, some sources now give priority to Pierre II Mauléon (1744–1831) of Loudun (in western France), who began to cultivate truffles around 1790. Mauléon saw an "obvious symbiosis" between the oak tree, the rocky soil, and the truffle and attempted to reproduce such an environment by taking acorns from trees known to have produced truffles and sowing them in chalky soil. His experiment was successful, with truffles found in the soil around the newly grown oak trees years later. In 1847, Auguste Rousseau of Carpentras (in Vaucluse) planted of oak trees (again from acorns found on the soil around truffle-producing oak trees), and he subsequently obtained large harvests of truffles. He received a prize at the 1855 World's Fair in Paris.