Matsutake

Gilled mushroom with thick, meaty, very flavorful

white flesh, spicy, fragrant or even fruity aroma.

Resembles portabella.

Japanese wild mushroom but a close

relative is common in the wild in North

America. Rarely available fresh at price

about 70 times button mushroom's, also

canned (not very good).

Truffle

Highly flavored, rare fungus with high MSG content.

Demand far exceeds supply so price of

good, fresh truffle is about $1300/lb

(

See note in text).

($3000 a kilo).

Oregon white truffle

Choice fungus but nearly extinct. Close relative of

truffle. (See note in text).

When available fresh, price is $150-200/lb

($335-450 a kilo).

The elusive truffles

Finally, let's focus on the elusive truffle, a fungus that most of us will never have the chance

to taste because the demand far exceeds its supply. It is said to have a wonderful flavor but, like its

highly overrated companion, caviar, it is reserved for wealthy diners.

Truffle is also called earth nut. This name describes its natural habitat—underground. The

truffle is small and knobby, and one can mistake it for an acorn or a rock. It has no stem. The solid

interior has the consistency of wax, and it chips into flakes, like candle wax.

Truffles have an unusually high glutamic acid content (naturally occurring monosodium

glutamate, MSG). This partially explains their popularity in the kitchen. They not only contribute

their wonderful mushroomy flavor, but also accent the flavor of any food, as is characteristic of

MSG (see Flavorings chapter).

Truffles grow in a symbiotic relationship with certain trees, mainly oaks. Since they grow

underground, the truffle hunters who know where they have been found before have a better chance

of finding them again. If you don't have that knowledge, you can always hire a trained truffle dog or

pig who can smell truffles from the surface and signal where you should dig. In the case of pigs,

who have a taste for truffles themselves, you must muzzle it or there won't be anything left to bring

home.

A musky-smelling chemical both in the saliva of the male pig and in truffles make female

pigs such superb truffle hunters. That scent has a most aphrodisiac effect on female pigs, inducing

mating behavior. There is no such effect on dogs, but with their good sense of smell and hunting

instinct, people train them to search for truffles.

It is interesting to note that researchers found human males having this same chemical in

their underarm sweat. Does that mean that human females are better at sniffing out truffles than

males are? The theory has not been tested yet, but keep it in mind if you embark on a truffle trek.

True truffles are only found in Europe. The most famous of all, the black truffle, grows in

the Périgold area of France and adjacent Spain. Its almost as famous neighbor, the white truffle,

appears in Northern Italy and the adjacent former Yugoslavia.

Because of their scarceness and popularity, many attempts have been made to cultivate

truffles. A truffle farm would be as lucrative as gold in the California Mother Lode. But so far, no

one has been successful. Some hopeful French growers in 1978 were able to produce only a small

quantity. An entrepreneur in Spain who planted evergreen oak trees and truffle spores over a large

acreage in the early 1970s expected to start harvesting them in the early 1990s. In fact, he

successfully harvested a small crop in 1993, which was predicted to increase dramatically in

following years. If you find a great drop in truffle prices, you will know his expectations were

fulfilled.

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