Imported and American caviar, luxury products: foie gras, truffles, mushrooms
Home
About Us
Caviar Guide
Truffles Guide
Foie Gras Guide
Show Order
Fine Foods Delicatessen
TO ORDER BY PHONE CALL:
(908)-338-3992
Search our Store: 


Home > Truffle guide. White & Black Truffles.  >  The word "truffle"


The word "truffle"

The word "truffle" for the majority of readers is probably associated with either some sophisticated and very expensive dish about which A. S. Pushkin wrote in "Evgeniy Onegin": "...the luxury of young age, best blossoming of French cuisine... " or with chocolate candy. We wish however to tell about truffles themselves - truffle mushrooms (Tuberales) - because it is their fruit bodies that the sophisticated dishes are cooked from, and because it is the shape of these mushrooms that reminds everybody about the well-known candy.

Truffle mushrooms can be found in relatively warm regions of temperate zones of both hemispheres. They belong to the group of so called underground (hypogean) Ascomycetes, a specific character of which is underground fruit bodies. Their shape is round or tuber-like, consistency is fleshy or gelatinous, size - from a pea to a large potato tuber and even larger, and their weight can sometimes reach 1 kg.

All fruit bodies have external leathery layer - smooth, cracked or covered with warts, which is called peridium, and spores-containing tissue located inside, which, when cut, has a typical marble pattern made of light and dark veins. Fruit bodies of several kinds of truffles can be yellow, pink, purple, orange, green, black, blue... Why do they need such diversity of colors if most of the time they are hidden under the ground or forest litter? This is still a mystery.

Like many other soil mushrooms, most truffles form mycorrhiza - symbiotic connections with the roots of forest trees and bushes. Mycelium covers young soft roots of the host plant, thin mushroom threads penetrate surrounding soil and act as extension of the root system of the host, obtaining minerals and water for it. Mushrooms also guard the plant's root system from germs contained in the soil, for example, Phytophthora.

The host plant, in its turn, provides the truffle with energy stored in carbohydrates.

So-called black truffles (Tuber melanosporum, T.aestivum) are symbiotic with oak, beech, hornbeam, hazelnut; white truffles (T.magnatum, Choiromyces meandriformis) - with birch, poplar, elm, basswood, willow, ash, hawthorn. Sometimes truffles form mycorrhiza with coniferous trees, too.

Studies of recent years have shown that there is a wide variety of truffles in the forests of Australia, where trees are mostly of the Eucalyptus genus. These forests have no analogues in the world in quantity of truffle kinds, and the list of mushrooms growing there continues to expand as new areas are being explored.

The mushrooms fruit bodies of which develop on the surface distribute their spores by means of wind and water. But fruit bodies of truffles are located underground, and for them it is impossible; also for the spores it is rather difficult to get released from the fruit body covered with a thick skin. The role of spore distributors for these mushrooms is performed by several animals who seek and eat truffles. Spores located inside the fruit body pass through their bowels intact and are disseminated all over the forest together with feces. Later they find their way underground together with rain water or with the help of dung beetles who dig animal excrements in the soil, storing them for their larvae.

If the conditions happen to be favorable, spores germinate and create mycorrhiza with a host plant. In Australian forests at least 40 kinds of mammals play the role of truffle distributors. The most specialized of them belong to the family of kangaroo rats (Potoroidae) whose nutrition almost completely consists of truffles. Among them - rare and endangered Potorous longipes. This night animal of the size of a hare devotes most of its active time to sniffing out truffles. In some places potorouses feed on more than 50 kinds of truffles!

Many other Australian animals hunt for truffles as well - for example,
bandicoots (marsupial badgers), but they don't do it so purposefully, eating a significant proportion of other foods.

In coniferous forests of Pacific coast of USA truffle spores are disseminated mostly by rodents, for example, Californian red vole. These creatures spend a considerable part of their life under the ground - close to truffles, their beloved food. Another species of American mammals, northern flying squirrel (Glaucomus sabrinus), spends the daytime inside hollow trees while performing very far raids at night, coming down to earth in the search of truffles. Rodents are the main truffle consumers and distributors in other regions of Earth (South America and Europe) as well.

So, how do the animals find truffles? By smell - mature mushrooms emit distinctive aroma, often pungent or fragrant. Various kinds of truffles have various smells: some of them are pleasant for humans, others are not (for example, the smell of rotten onions, freshly laid road asphalt or even feces). But obviously the animals don't care about the smell of mushrooms. In Spain, Italy and France farmers use trained dogs and even pigs for sniffing out mature black truffles, which are loved by gourmets and known for its wonderful aroma and delicate flavor. Until 1960s of XIX century even trained bears were used for gathering truffles around Moscow.

Besides attractive smell and edible flesh, some truffles have other accommodations for distributing their spores by animals. For example, Mesophellia - an endemic genus of Australian truffles - has a fruit body consisting of three different layers. The first one - hard outer skin - is a combination of mushroom tissues and plant roots. There is the second layer under it which consists of a multitude of grayish-green spores. And the third layer is a jelly-like core, which attracts animals with its taste - it is sterile and doesn't have any other obvious function except being a food reward for an animal that finds the mushroom.

Long-nosed bandicoot - truffle lover

It is very interesting to observe animals eating truffle fruit bodies which happened to survive in the sites of forest fires. For example, at the island of Tasmania after a forest fire bettongs experience something like truffle fever, devoting all their time to mushroom hunting. The same behavior was observed with potorouses and bandicoots in Australia. At the fire sites truffles are much more fragrant than in neighboring unburned areas. One can suggest that fire causes changes in the smell of truffles that make them even more attractive for animals or enhance animals' appetite. Of course confirmation of this hypothesis requires special research, but we can say with confidence that, by eating truffles in burnt forest areas and then disseminating their spores, mycophagous animals largely help the recovery of truffle populations. And therefore - the recovery of normal conditions for growth of mycorrhiza-forming trees weakened by the fire.

So, truffles are not only a gastronomic product but also an important link in the chain of interacting components of the forest.




 



  ecommerce provided by Yahoo! Small Business. Imported and American caviar, delicatessen products: foie gras, truffles, mushrooms  
Home  ·  Return policy  ·  Shipping Info  ·  About Us  ·  Contact Us  ·  Disclaimer  ·  Links  ·  Recipes  ·  Site Map  ·  Buyer Reviews

We accept all major credit cards and PayPal: foie gras, truffles, mushrooms
Note: "800-CAVIAR" is a Web site name and does not belong to any telephone numbers or digits.