For centuries, the truffle has enchanted, worried, delighted and questioned. Even today, it jealously guards a number of secrets that no one knows how to penetrate, which is probably for the best.
By Serge Desazars
What has already been said about the truffle! For centuries, if not millennia, it has in turn bewitched, worried, delighted or questioned men. She fascinates them. It is true that in addition to its exceptional gustatory values, it adds a part of mystery which, throughout the ages, has disconcerted all those who have studied it: gastronomes, religious, agronomists or scientists. Even today, it jealously guards a number of secrets that neither science nor the truffle growers themselves have managed to uncover.
The use of the truffle is lost in the most high antiquity. The scholars of the time believed her to be the “daughter of the born of the combined action of all the elements: the earth, water, and the fire of the lightning from which it draws its aspect of ball of coal. This mysterious object with a subtle carnal scent, coming from the basement, would it not be a creature of the Evil One, sent to tempt the most weak? Isn’t its blackish color the mark of the blackness of the soul of those who use it? Besides, don’t we call “the circles with short and dried out vegetation in which, at the foot of trees, it proliferates? So many thoughts which led to its banishment by the Church during the Middle Ages.
At the end of the 14th century, Duke Jean I of Berry, a great lover of truffles, contributed to the return to grace of the black pearl by serving it at the wedding banquet of his nephew, King Charles VI, with Isabeau of Bavaria. Later, another king, François I er, discovered the truffle in circumstances that were surprising to say the least: during his imprisonment in Spain in 1525. Once freed, he made it known to the French court. From this period dates an alliance that has never been denied: that of the truffle and the tables of sovereigns. In 1826, Brillat-Savarin gave it the nickname of “diamond of the kitchen”. Throughout this century, truffles were as vital to a great table as the finest wines, even if it meant some abuse: thus, the truffled turkey had to be stuffed with 500 grams to 2.5 kg of truffles!
Then came the Great War and the accelerating changes in the rural world. Decimated in the trenches, the peasantry must refocus on high-yield production and abandon the maintenance of wooded areas that provide excellent truffle fields. With production at half-mast and a bleak outlook,truffle growers are condemned to revolutionize their practices or disappear in the short term.
The development of truffle plants, i.e. mycorrhized in the laboratory, allows the creation of a real truffle agriculture, with its truffle fields and its cultivation methods. In three decades, the profession has metamorphosed. The erosion of the yields is certainly stopped, but the truffle remains reluctant to any mass production and science remains powerless to guarantee an optimization of the harvests. In the end, if it now depends on man for its development and production, this little rebel ball holds man in its power and refuses to give itself easily. Should we not see in this a beautiful lesson of humility given to those who only aspire to shape the planet to their needs and get the maximum from it ?
The truffle, or rather truffles as the family is numerous, is an underground mushroom. It is the product of a mycelium, a network of filaments developing in the soil, between the roots of certain trees. This exchange of good practices, or symbiosis, sees the mycelium provide the roots of its acolyte with mineral salts and water, while the tree supplies it with sugars. The truffle is difficult and few species – about fifteen – find favor in his eyes. This is why they can only be found at the foot of hornbeams, Austrian black pines, hazel trees or, of course, oaks. But the tree is not everything. The nature of the soil is also a determining factor, as well as, to a lesser extent, the climate. A calcareous soil and hot and dry summers offer the ideal conditions for its development. Consequently, the regions of predilection are south of the Loire and, out of France, in Space, Italy and Australia.
If there are dozens of underground mushrooms biologically similar to truffles, the queen is without question the black truffle, or tuber melanosporum. Also known as Périgord truffle or melano, it delivers nuances of earth, wood or musk. Of variable size, it can go from the small pea to certain exceptional harvests which can exceed the kilo. Its peridium is frankly black, covered with small pyramidal excrescences, like diamonds. The color of its flesh is of an intense black. Above all, it is crossed by an interlacing of white veins.
Born from the marriage of the last spring rains and the first heat, between the end of April and the end of June, the black truffle develops slowly between summer and winter, to reach its full maturity between December and March It is at the end of the season that the patience of the truffle grower is rewarded by long walks under the branches studded with dried leaves, in the company of a dog with a carefully trained nose. There is something eternal in this scene, as well as a delicious atmosphere of serenity and time regained. Step by step, the basket fills with earthy balls, delicately extracted from the ground by an expert hand that is careful not to hurt the precious crop. Each nugget is harvested at maturity, with no risk of error since truffles that are too young do not give off any scent and, therefore, remain completely undetectable, even for a champion of the sense of smell. It is also possible to take an interest in the ballet of the flies which twirl around the vertical of the truffle in which they have just laid their eggs, but one can easily imagine the random character, if not the fantasy, of this method. The use of the pig, the only person in charge of the truffle quest in the 19th century, was abandoned: the animal, greedy and heavy, degraded the mycelium while walking and, often, swallowed the mushroom while digging it
