RuvidaMente
THE TRUFFLE:
SNIFFING OUT THE TUBER'S SECRETS
Until a short time ago, people who wanted to learn more about the nature and structure of truffles, the “diamonds” of cuisine, and who read a scientific study or at least a serious work of popularization on the subject, would soon realize that they had entered into one of the most intricate chapters in the whole encyclopedia of nature. On the surface, however, everything appeared deceptively simple.
According to the texts, that “diamond” belonged to the mushroom family but it was a highly particular type of fungus, one that, as its story unfolded in the accounts, gained in fascination and took on increasing appeal. Common mushrooms, whether edible or poisonous, have one major defect. They are not autotrophic plants, which means that, being deprived of chlorophyll, they cannot manufacture their own nourishment through photosynthesis. They are parasitic plants, spongers or, as the experts say, heterotrophic. Worse, they are saprophytes, living on dead and, preferably, decaying organisms. The truffle, on the other hand, is a member of the more attractive symbiotic category of vegetal organisms that live through exchanges of nutritive substances with similar organisms.
The lure of the truffle, which had been partly due to the mystery
surrounding its origins, was weakened somewhat when scientists discovered that it might be possible to provoke the process that leads to the formation of the tuber. That means that it should be
possible to reproduce truffles, whose scents have attracted dogs and hogs, the most formidable hunters of the tubers, as well as the most sophisticated gourmets.
It is reported that the farmers in the countryside around Gubbio in the region of Umbria habitually threw away the “stinking” tubers, as if they were rotten potatoes, until they were admonished by truffle hunters from nearby Acqualagna in the neighboring region of the Marches. In view of the farmers’ reactions, it is fair to ask how the passion for truffles got started and what has been responsible for its acceptance as one of the supreme ingredients of haute cuisine.
The answer, quite probably, is that the tuber is most appreciated because of its rarity. On the day when the truffle becomes as common and accessible to everyone as the potato, it could well enter into a fatal and irreversible decline in popularity despite its special characteristics.
The truffle appeared in Latin literature in the first century BC, when Pliny the Elder discussed it at substantial length, although apparently not on the basis of direct personal knowledge. The author of the world’s first great natural history was fascinated by the tuber’s unusual features. “This plant, which is capable of growing without roots, has been named tuberum [truffle] and lives completely surrounded by dirt, without the support of any fiber or other filament….
Truffles do not even adhere to the soil. In addition, they are encased by a rind in such a way that it is not
possible to say with any certainty what they are, whether dirt or anything else, or if they are callouses of the earth.”
Pliny got his information from the Greek writer Theophrastus.
However, the satiric poet Juvenal clearly indicated that he was acquainted with the truffle and appreciated it. He mentions it in his Fifth Satire, in which he describes how a certain Virro, a glutton himself but a stingy host to his social inferiors, entertained at dinners: “His nibs is served a liver from a force-fed goose, a capon as big as the goose and a spit-roasted boar…Afterward, if it is springtime and there’s been enough thunder to start them growing, truffles are served. ‘Ah, Africa!’ proclaims the gourmet. ‘Keep your wheat and unyoke your oxen, just as long as you send us truffles.’ ”
Pliny also observed that African truffles were the best, while Juvenal talks about spring truffles. It is obvious that these are not the celebrated truffles of modern Italian cuisine, the Tuber magnatum and Tuber melanosporum or, respectively, the famous black truffles of Norcia, in Umbria, and the white tubers of Alba, in Piedmont. Pliny also talks about Spanish tubers and others found in the vicinity of the Dardanelles but those locations are below 40 degrees of latitude, which means that the items in question are only pedestrian imitations of the true truffle.
They are even inferior to all of the subspecies and minor varieties that are found in Europe in the strip between 40 and 46 degrees latitude north. They are tubers of little quality and it is difficult to understand what good the Romans saw in them. It could be, however, that, prepared according to the recipes given by Apicius in De Re Coquinaria, they might at least turn out to be edible.
At the same time, it might also be objected that, made as specified in
the following recipe, virtually anything could be rendered edible.
“Scrape the truffles, parboil them, sprinkle them with salt and put them on small spits. Roast them and put in a pan oil, liquamen [fish sauce], concentrated sweet wine, wine, pepper and honey. Once the sauce has boiled, bind it with cornstarch. Remove the truffles from the spits and serve them with the sauce.”
Bartolomeo Platina, author of Piacere Onesto e la Buona Salute, makes it clear that truffles were served on the tables of the 15th century. He discusses the black truffles of Norcia and remarks on “the marvelous cleverness of the sow of Norcia, which is able to recognize the place where they grow and, in addition, having discovered them, puts them down as soon as her master scratches her ear.”
At a certain point, people began going out hunting for truffles with sows—later replaced by dogs—on leashes. At the end of the 16th century, some German nobles who were guests of the Emilian litterateur Lodovico Castelvetro, asked him why so many fine gentlemen were wandering around the Italian countryside with sows on leashes.
Castelvetro told them that they were hunting truffles. The guests were not familiar with the tubers and, equating the Italian word tartufo with the German Der Teufel (the Devil), expressed astonishment.
Italians neither hunted nor ate the Devil, Castelvetro explained, but a precious tuber, which at that time was not used as an ingredient but consumed on its own as a food. According to the texts of Cristofaro di Messisbugo and Bartolomeo Scappi, truffles were served raw with salt and pepper or in a soup after having been stewed in oil and flavored with the juice of melangole (bitter oranges) and pepper.
Castelvetro reported that in his age the preferred type of truffle was
the black variety and there are many people today who share that view, despite the fact that there is a difference in tastes and the ways in which magnatum and melanosporum are employed in
cuisine. “The truffle is not as spongy as the mushroom, but firmer, and some are ash-gray and others black,” he wrote. “The second are regarded as the best and, therefore, are sold at higher
prices, fetching more than half a gold scudo for a pound of 12 ounces. They are found in rather large quantities in the district of Rome [of which Norcia was then a part] and Lombardy.”
At that time, Lombardy covered a much larger area than the modern region, since it included virtually the whole of the Po Valley.
From Castelvetro’s time onward, the truffle was to be found on the tables of aristocrats and the haute bourgeoisie. And no text on natural history, like Vincenzo Tanara’s L’Economia del Cittadino in Villa (“Management of the City-Dweller’s Household in the Country”), written in the 17th century, or collection of recipes, such as those compiled by great cooks like Bartolomeo Stefani of Bologna, Sicilian Carlo Nascia, Neapolitan Antonio Latini, Alberto Alvisi, chef to Barnaba Cardinal Chiaramonti, later Pope Pius VII, and Vincenzo Corrado, the first great writer of modern Italian cuisine, ignores the truffle.
Appreciation for the qualities of truffles and demand for the tubers has
grown steadily from the 18th century to the present day. The only matter of dispute was the question of which variety was the best. That issue was being hotly debated in Italy as well as
elsewhere at the beginning of the current century, when gourmet Pellegrino Artusi wrote, not without a trace of irony:
“The big question of the Whites and the Blacks that has afflicted Italy
for so long, with echoes of the ancient contest between the Guelfs and the Ghibillines, is now threatening to flare up again over the truffle.” However, Artusi had no doubts as to which was the
most refined. “I range myself on the side of the whites,” he declared, “and I say and maintain that the black truffle is the worst of them all.” He may have exaggerated somewhat in denigrating
the black Tuber melanosporum but his stand showed that he was on the right scent in choosing the proper faction.
That argument was settled long ago. Only the French, whose gastronomic glories include the black truffle of Périgord, refuse to admit that the white variety is far and away the best. The reason for such obstinacy is simple. White truffles are almost impossible to find in France. That explains why the most recent edition (1988) of the French bible, the Larousse Gastronomique, still persists in affirming that “the most highly regarded is the black truffle of Périgord,” although it grudgingly admits that “the white truffle of Piedmont enjoys a certain favor.”
The most fitting response to the Larousse Gastronomique is provided by the following recipe, which Corrado inserted in his cookbook Cuoco Galante. Although it is more than two centuries ago, the formula still has the power to stimulate the imaginations of even the most avant-garde of modern cooks.
“The breast [of veal] can be stuffed between meat and bone with lean meat of the same animal mixed with a stuffing of chopped ham, beef marrow, greens, white truffles and
herbs,”
Corrado writes. “When it has been stuffed, the meat should be roasted in the oven until it is done. While it is cooking, it should be basted with broth. Serve it with a coulis of shrimp.”
