Why Do Truffles Taste So Weird? - BBC Future

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The subterranean fungi can transform pasta, French fries and even honey. But what’s behind its famously funky flavour?

Let's face it, truffles are a little bit mysterious. Far more people have heard food writers sing the praises of the knobby subterranean mushrooms than have actually tasted them. And not even all the people who've tasted them feel a rhapsody coming on afterwards. Truffles, as M F K  Fisher writes in Serve It Forth, “may or may not be as good as they are rare and dear”.

With the white variety, one of the more rare and dear, going for thousands of dollars a pound at auction, and their charms apparently fading quickly in the hours and days after harvest, is it any wonder that disappointment might rear its head?

Getty Images The complex stew of compounds in a truffle helps create its unique taste (Credit: Getty Images)Getty Images
The complex stew of compounds in a truffle helps create its unique taste (Credit: Getty Images)

But the reports from people who have managed to obtain a taste of a fresh, authentic truffle note a very particular flavour and scent. The words “musky,” “garlick-y,” “sulphurous,” and “funky” come up a lot. It's believed that some of the distinctive aroma comes from a molecule called androstenone, a hormone that is also produced by male pigs and whose presence in truffles is said to be the reason that pigs make fine truffle hunters.

Not all humans can smell adrostenone, thanks to naturally occurring genetic variety in smell receptors; those who can report it smelling like sandalwood, vanilla, or a bit like urine, perhaps adding to the potential for dissatisfaction with your tagliatelles aux truffes. 

So far, what we know about truffle scents comes from sampling the air around the mushrooms  

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