March 31, 2010--Too Much Information

Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.

For example, one of my over-the-top indulgences is truffles. The black, Périgord variety. A simple dish of pasta with a generous shaving of these divine fungi, though it can set you back $30 or more (depending on the generosity of the shaver), is to die for.

Part of the allure, beyond the earthy aroma and transporting flavor, is the still ancient way in which they are gathered. Pigs, more specifically sows, female pigs, are the preferred means by which the Périgord truffle is discovered nested in the roots of oak trees in the Dordogne region of France. Pigs are domesticated boars and the reason sows are able to discover them and dig them out is because these miraculous truffles secrete androstenol, a hormone produced by boars before mating.

So truffles of the Périgord variety play an essential role in the sex lives of boars--and sows--if truffle gatherers would allow them to not only dig them up but gulp them down. But at more than $100 an ounce on the truffle market (thus my $30 pasta truffle "supplement") they snatch them away, literally from the poor sow's mouth. But if the farmers are not quick about that they are likely to have a finger bitten off. This happens often enough that some modern day hunters and gatherers have taken to using specially trained truffle-sniffing dogs.

So what about domestication? Rather than roaming the forests with a pig on a leash, some have attempted to propagate them, which would make ferreting them out infinitely easier. And who knows, maybe drive down the price. Though I Know I shouldn't get too excited about that possibility.

Truffles have long eluded techniques of domestication, as Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin in 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."

Yes, part of the lore is their rarity and, alas, their cost.

But not to be deterred, and even risking turning truffles into yet another readily available item in the Whole Foods of the world, science marches on; and according to a recent article in the New York Times (linked below), a team of French and Italian researches has just finished unlocking the truffle's genetic code. They have unpacked its genome.

Not in the pure interest of science of course. Why, one might ask, with the secrets of the causes of cancer still not fully know, why would these fungi-mad scientists turn their expensive attention to truffles when other more significant and life-threatening medical mysteries remain unsolved?

The answer can only be truffle mania, and the fact that the best ones go for much more than $100 an ounce.

So what have they discovered?

As one might expect, considering boars' and sows' obsession with the noble tuber, and considering that the truffle geneticists are French and Italian, it's all about sex, sex, sex.

And, incidentally, domestication.

They have found that not only is the active element in Périgord truffles intimately linked to the sex lives of the frustrated scrofa that are tortured in their hunt for truffle thrills, but the truffles themselves are quite sexually active. If true, and who am I to doubt science--we are not here talking global warming--this too might be part of their culinary appeal. After all, anything that might serve as an aphrodisiac comes at quite a dear price.

But before you get too excited, a truffle's sex life is unlikely to wind up as the subject of New York Post headlines. For the foreseeable future we will still have to remain satisfied with those devoted to Tiger Woods and Sandra Bullock's soon-to-be ex.

Until now, like many sad specimens from the plant kingdom, these precious fungi have been thought to lead asexual lives. But the truffle scientists have discovered that they have two sexes, or, to be more botanically precise, two mating types, and by exchanging the spores of both truffles propagate. And propagating, as we know from Darwin, is what it's all about.

With humans principally interested in gathering, selling, and eating truffles, and less about further evolution, this propagation is seriously threatened. Périgord truffle gathering and ingesting, these being the most prized of the various truffle varieties, has so expanded, that not only has the price risen with the demand curve (the Free Market works better here than on Wall Street) but the concomitant supply curve has plummeted. Thus the race to decode their genome. The better to propagate them.

Now that we know there are two mating types, farmers are well advised to seed oak tree roots with both kinds. This will not only hopefully lead to a restored supply but also make the truffles themselves a lot happy while awaiting their ultimate fate.