There Are No Truffles in Truffle Oil (2014)

https://priceonomics.com/there-are-no-truffles-in-truffle-oil/

by obi1kenobi • 10 years ago

166 184 10 years ago

Commercially available truffle oil sold in US markets tastes absolutely horrid. It has a pungent, chemical aroma, and its taste completely overpowers whatever you put it on.

Do yourself a favor and just buy some high quality olive oil if you want a better finishing oil for your food. Oilve-oil and vinegar taprooms seem to have exploded in popularity in the US over the past few years.

kls• 10 years ago

Agreed, I went to culinary school years ago and we had access to both high quality black and white truffles, to say the least I fell in love on first bite, we used to fry slices up in butter and eat them like a potato chip while in class, that was heaven. My first introduction to truffle oil was years later and conversely flavor hell. I could never really put the flavor into words until I read this article, a gasoline like flavor is a perfect description. I knew when I tasted it that there was no way any essence of truffles where in it. Truffles make other flavors "pop" and have umami. Truffle oil kills the flavor of the underlining ingredients and replaces them with a chemical and gasoline taste.

4ad4• 10 years ago

Not only in the US. Everywhere is the same.

Black truffles are not that expensive, and you don't need much. I encourage everyone to try them instead of this ridiculous thing. There is some slight similarity with the real thing, but the word here is slight. It's obscene, gasoline-like, and lacks the very essential complexity and subtleness that make truffles really unique.

gabemart• 10 years ago

If this is true, I am genuinely surprised that it is legal to sell "Truffle oil".

Take the truffle oil offered by 3 big UK supermarkets [1][2][3]. All three stores describe it as having:

  > Ingredients:
  > Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Truffle Extract

What else are we to interpret "truffle extract" as, other than an extract made from truffles?

Sainsbury's describes it as "Truffle flavour" [3] which I guess I could see as not actually stating it contains truffles (aside from the previously mentioned ingredients list). But Tesco describes it as "Truffle Flavoured" [1], which seems to me to more strongly imply it actually contains some truffle, and Asda describes it as "Flavoured with White Truffle" [2] which to me sounds like an unambiguous statement that it contains at least some white truffle.

If this article is accurate, it seems like a complete and utter con.

[1] http://www.tesco.com/groceries/product/details/?id=292974500

[2] https://groceries.asda.com/product/seed-nut-oil/la-espanola-...

[3] http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/gb/gro...

andrewla2• 10 years ago

I agree that this seems odd, and all I've ever seen as proof that "truffle oil does not contain truffles" is the bald assertion, without any other evidence.

In the US, I can imagine (barely) that this might be permissible, but in Europe, with DOC and AOC laws, it seems almost impossible that something could be called "truffle oil" as opposed to "truffle-flavoured oil". "Truffle Extract" and "Flavoured with White Truffle" seem to be pretty unambiguously claiming that truffles were involved in the preparation.

Alex3917• 10 years ago

all I've ever seen as proof that "truffle oil does not contain truffles" is the bald assertion, without any other evidence.

It's not even possible to make commercial truffle oil with real truffles, because the flavor doesn't last longer than a day or two. You could theoretically make it in your house and then use it immediately, but there wouldn't really be any point.

logfromblammo5• 10 years ago

I am primed to believe the worst after learning that a container labeled as "100% Extra-Virgin Olive Oil. Product of Italy." might not bear even a single truthful statement. The barest of investigative scrutiny reveals it as filtered and deodorized Spanish third-pressing olive oil, cut with hazelnut oil, that spent a traumatic night in Italy once. Or when I learned that the "clover honey" sold in grocery stores might actually be Chinese honey, from hives supplemented with high-fructose corn syrup, with all pollen and particulates filtered out to conceal its origins, then cut again during bottling with high-fructose corn syrup.

The burden of proof is actually on the manufacturer to show that their "truffle oil" contains actual truffles. The question is whether or not I can believe their claim without proof--and I don't.

If it sells at a premium above a near-equivalent commodity good, my default assumption is that the claims are marketing bullshit aimed at credulous buyers.

But how important is the claim anyway? If it makes my food taste better at a fair price, I don't really care if it has any actual truffle in it. I don't even know what actual truffle tastes like--nor do I really care to learn, at their typical market prices.

But I think in the U.S., there would definitely be a problem if a food label stated "natural flavor" or "truffle extract" when it was actually "artificial flavor". The name on the front of the package doesn't matter much here, except for specific exceptions. But if the back read as anything other than "olive oil, artificial flavor" the manufacturer could get slapped on the wrist so hard.

13of402• 10 years ago

My wife picked up a cheap bottle of what claimed to be truffle oil at a chain grocery store in Herculaneum (that's in Europe) last year. On inspection, it was actually a bottle of cheap vegetable oil with a slice of some other kind of mushroom in it and a hint of trufflesque flavoring. Maybe somewhere in the fine print it said what the flavoring actually was, but the rest of the bottle, from the "TARTUFO!" label on the front to the fake truffle chunk inside, was a blatant con.

soperj2• 10 years ago

There's also been cases of shredded Parmesan not containing and Parmesan at all, and a big part of it actually being woodpulp.

nommm-nommm8• 10 years ago

Who cares if it's permissible? Food fraud is surprisingly common and the chances of getting caught are close to zero. If you buy fish there's a 33% chance you get a different fish than what you bought.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/02/21/172589997/one...

4ad4• 10 years ago

I can't speak for all Europe, but here in Austria truffle oil has small pieces of truffle in it.

Of course, those do nothing, as the chemicals found in truffles are, to a first approximation not soluble in oil. It's just the same chemical crap with some placebo truffle in it.

Friends don't let friends buy truffle oil.

chefandy4• 10 years ago

Well they sell Girlscout cookies...

DonHopkins2• 10 years ago

...and baby oil.

corin_3• 10 years ago

But Tesco describes it as "Truffle Flavoured" [1], which seems to me to more strongly imply it actually contains some truffle

"X Flavoured" is accepted terminology for not containing X. For example, sweets can be "fruit flavoured", crips (US/chips) can be "bacon flavoured", with no expectation (either cultural or legal) that they are made using real fruit or bacon.

"Flavoured with White Truffle", on the other hand, would need to use actual white truffle in some way.

fusiongyro• 10 years ago

There are actually a lot of kosher "bacon" potato chip flavors. The flavor is usually faked with smoked paprika. "Bacon salt" is also kosher, for the same reason.

In that case, keeping it kosher widens the market a bit, and the man on the street probably can't tell the difference anyway. Beside that, it's probably cheaper and easier to flavor with smoked paprika than actual bacon.

I have some truffle oil at home and always wondered how it could possibly be profitable to produce; one wouldn't want to squeeze anything out of a truffle. I guess now I have the answer, but I'm not too upset about it. It's probably as close to truffle-flavor as any grocery store in my state will actually get.

saas_sam• 10 years ago

They should go full throttle and just label things "Truffle Blasted!"

chrisseaton2• 10 years ago

For example, sweets can be "fruit flavoured", crips (US/chips) can be "bacon flavoured", with no expectation (either cultural or legal) that they are made using real fruit or bacon.

I'm not sure that's really the case.

For example, orange flavoured sweets derive their flavour from real oranges, but orange flavour sweets are synthetically flavoured.

https://www.slough.gov.uk/business/trading-standards/food-st...

caf2• 10 years ago

"Maple flavoured syrup" is another one.

drjesusphd• 10 years ago

with no expectation (either cultural or legal) that they are made using real fruit or bacon.

I'm sorry, no. If there weren't a cultural expectation that words have these meanings, they wouldn't feel the need to put it on the label. It's a lie.

Ygg2• 10 years ago

    > Ingredients:
    > Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Truffle Extract

That's like a double lie, right there. If they are cheap enough to skimp on Truffles, what is to say, they aren't cheap enough to skimp on Virgin Olive Oil?

     > Honest ingredients:
     > Sunflower oil, Olive flavor, Truffles flavor*
     
       * which might have at one point passed near a guy
         that ate actual Truffles

koolba• 10 years ago

I'm sure the explanation is that: "Extra" refers to them using a larger portion than normal, "Virgin" is the company name of their supplier, "Olive" is a variety of sunflower seed, and there is a missing dash in "Truffle Ex-Tract".

dsugarman• 10 years ago

It is estimated that 70% of Olive Oils in super markets are fraudulent so I definitely don't think truffle oil contains the good stuff.

twism2• 10 years ago

probably in addition to the honest ingredients the sunflower oil has been known to fraternize with the palm and coconut oil

chadgeidel• 10 years ago

And "Extra Virgin Olive Oil" generally isn't. This has made the rounds a few times - a quick googling turns up this article from about a year ago:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/11988...

EDIT: I see @codezero beat me to the punch: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12453683

radiorental• 10 years ago

It could easily have truffle extract in the practical sense but none in the homeopathic sense if you know what I mean.

DonHopkins2• 10 years ago

Maybe it's homeopathic. I've heard of water memory, but is there such a thing as olive oil memory?

WorldMaker• 10 years ago

I am under the impression that the food term "extract" is generally not very well regulated and says nothing about when or how it was extracted. At least in the US, I don't think the FDA regulates the terminology that heavily, but I may be mistaken.

I believe there are some well known flavor extracts that were chemically extracted decades ago and since have been maintained as artificial cultures in various ways (certain types of banana extracts used in candies, for instance). I don't know if truffle extract is one of them, though. I guess more accurately, I don't know if we can tell from just an ingredients list which sort of "extract" it might be, if it's a recent "fresh" extract product or some form of a longer term chemical extraction process.

(I think the US FDA, at least, does regulate what constitutes "Natural Flavorings" and so the lack of the word "natural" in packaging could be a sign, maybe.)

matco112• 10 years ago

What the article states is not true (but - at the same time - it's not false!): it's simple, you can buy "truffle oil" that does not contain truffle, or you can keep your eye sharp (and pay more) and buy oil containing real truffle (I have done both!)

Same applies to a lot of food out there. Here is a good example, olive oil: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/is-your-olive-oil-really-oliv...

Of course you can buy perfectly genuine, high quality, olive oil, you just need to know how to pick. The same applies to truffle oil.

The article is really saying that there are brands out there selling artificially flavored truffle oil (not a great surprise, if you ask me), and it fails to clarify a number of underlying premises it's making (or should be making). For example:

1) it is just not true that truffle is the most expensive food in the world. WHITE truffles are. Black truffles are a lot more common and a lot less expensive.

2) white truffle and black truffle are very different: not only they have a different taste, or grow in different geographies, but you eat them differently. For example you always only eat white truffle raw, while you usually cook black truffle. Truffles oil is normally made with black truffle, because the flavor of white truffle is hard to preserve in olive oil.

3) truffles are an underground mushroom. Like all mushrooms, there are many varieties (beyond the fact that they may be white or black), some are more flavorful than others. Their flavor is also affected by the type of tree they grew on (on the roots), which I think it's quite interesting.

4) black truffles grow in a handful of geographies around the world (the best ones are normally considered to be from France, Italy, or Spain), they last several days so they can be transported relatively easily

5) high quality white truffles come only from one - small -region in Italy, they last only 5-7 days from the moment they are picked and are difficult to transport (without making them spoil). The world's capital of white truffles is here (for October to December): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alba,_Piedmont

People spend huge sums for white truffles, some get bought for $30k, $40k or even $50k, which are even more astounding amounts, if you consider they are for a rock-like looking mushroom that will flavor one or two meals for you and will otherwise spoil in a few days...

Bonus fun trivia: truffles have not been successfully farmed, so they have to picked in the wild. Picking methods are different in different parts of the world: In France they normally use pigs to sniff truffles in the forests. Apparently one of the essences emitted by truffles is similar to sexual feromones in pigs, so they are naturally attracted to them and instinctively dig in the ground for them (but then the truffle picker has to pull The pig away before it the truffle gets eaten). In Italy, they use dogs. It takes years to train a dog to hunt for the smell of truffle (they told me 3-5 years is common), but then dogs do not eat truffles and when they find them, they carefully dig in the ground without breaking the truffle.

rconti• 10 years ago

What do you think of the numerous comments here pointing out that the flavor compounds in truffles are not oil-soluable, and that oil is used to PRESERVE truffles because it does not take the flavor away from the truffle?

spyder• 10 years ago

"truffles have not been successfully farmed"

that's not true, but it's hard to grow them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArqhhVnxZG4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlpQGExn4pw

Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zboif/e...

SeanLuke• 10 years ago

If this article is accurate, it seems like a complete and utter con.

It is absolutely true. Except in rare (and usually very expensive) cases, truffle oil does not contain anything made from truffles.

DanBC• 10 years ago

Something like a "chicken pie" would have to say how much chicken is in the pie. There's an exemption to that rule for ingredients that are used in small quantities for flavour.

http://www.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/multimedia/pdfs/q...

An ingredient or category of ingredients which is used in small quantities for the purposes of flavouring
Regulation 19(2)(a)(iii)
30. This exemption would apply whether or not pictorial representations are included on the label. Labels must comply with Schedule 8 to the Food Labelling Regulations 1996, as amended, concerning the use of the term “flavour” and should not infringe the provisions either of Section 15(1) of the Food Safety Act 1990 (concerning false or misleading indications) or the Trade Descriptions Act 1968.

Schedule 8 of The Food Labelling Regulations 1996 say:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1996/1499/contents/made

Any description incorporating the name of a food in such a way as to imply that the food, or the part of a food, being described has the flavour of the food named in the description.
Shall not be applied to any food unless the flavour of the food being described is derived wholly or mainly from the food named in the description, except that any description incorporating the word “chocolate” which is such as to imply that the food being described has a chocolate flavour may be applied to a food which has a chocolate flavour derived wholly or mainly from non fat cocoa solids where the purchaser would not be misled by the description.
This shall not be taken to prevent the use of the word “flavour” preceded by the name of a food when the flavour of the food being described is not wholly or mainly from the food named in the description.

I genuinely don't know who regulates this.

NLips3• 10 years ago

England: DEFRA Scotland, Wales, NI: Food Standards Agency

See http://tna.europarchive.org/20130513091226/http://www.food.g...

TillE• 10 years ago

how much chicken is in the pie

Yeah, I love the percentages on the ingredients for each item which is mentioned in the name of the product. My only real complaint about EU food labeling is that I wish they were a little more consistent about allergens. Sometimes they're bolded, sometimes only mentioned in a list at the end.

tptacek7• 10 years ago

"Vanilla extract" is often artificial as well.

What's more interesting: in its intended application (baked goods), repeated Cooks Illustrated taste tests were unable to distinguish artificial vanilla from the expensive stuff.

objclxt• 10 years ago

"Vanilla extract" is often artificial as well.

In many countries there are legal requirements for "Vanilla Extract" vis a vis the percentage that comes from vanilla beans, as opposed to "Vanilla Essence", which can and is typically artificial.

(I confess I bake a lot)

douche• 10 years ago

In my experience in the US, it is usually labeled well whether it is artificial or natural. Natural usually costs at least 3x as much artificial.

codesterling• 10 years ago

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/dining/16truf.html?_r=0

celticninja• 10 years ago

I think it is US specific as you could not do that under existing EU laws.

dogma1138• 10 years ago

You better check what do they define as "extra virgin olive oil" because in many cases it's also not olive oil ;)

Oilception.

adlpz• 10 years ago

I'm always amazed that this sort of blatant false advertisement is just allowed anywhere in the world.

In other news:

Historically, there is at least some mention of Italians infusing olive oils with real truffles, and Urbani Truffles sells truffle oil that it says is made from real truffles

I actually do that myself. Get a truffle, cut it in a couple of pieces and leave it soaking for a month or two in good olive oil. Not that hard, not even that expensive either if you live remotely close to where they grow. It's a bit funny how they try to make this look like if it was some arcane secret.

bpicolo• 10 years ago

Do be careful with making your own infused oils. Truffle/Garlic variants (and I'm sure others) definitely carry botulism risk.

fdgdasfadsf2• 10 years ago

The only careful way to make your own flavoured oils at home it to not make them.

knodi123• 10 years ago

as someone who appears to be claiming a bit of experience in the olive oil area,

leave it soaking for a month or two in good olive oil

I've heard an olive oil merchant explain that olive oil has a range of complex flavors of its own, but that it has a relatively short shelf life before it becomes genericized and boring, and loses the majority of its flavor and complexity and such.

Is there any truth to that?

xapata2• 10 years ago

Depends whether or not you're going for that early harvest taste. If you want your olive oil to taste peppery, almost difficult to eat, then yeah. I find that flavor lasts a month or two in a dark bottle kept out of the sun, though I have no idea how long the bottle has been on my grocery store shelf.

grecy• 10 years ago

Australia has very strict false advertising laws.

If you advertise it, there are severe penalties if it's not true.

Two examples come to mind:

General Motors (Holden) had a sale called "Employee pricing for all", after which it was discovered that customers were not getting quite the same deal as employees. GM had to either take the car back at full refund, or refund the price difference plus some other stuff, along with paying a huge fine.

A glitch on a website offered laptops for something like $300 instead of $3000 and a ton of people ordered them... the company was not allowed to back out (I think it was HP..)

MaxGabriel• 10 years ago

The author's claim that truffle oil is just olive oil and and added scent doesn't match up with my experiences. Truffle oil tastes totally different from olive oil, and I don't like the flavor.

The oil being artificially flavored is much less of a con than not being any different from olive oil.

chefandy4• 10 years ago

They didn't say it tasted no different from olive oil, they said it was olive oil, with artificial flavoring added. Which is true. Tang is artificially flavored water. That doesn't mean it's no different from water.

corin_3• 10 years ago

"Despite the name, most truffle oil does not contain even trace amounts of truffle; it is olive oil mixed with 2,4-dithiapentane, a compound that makes up part of the smell of truffles and is as associated with a laboratory as Californian food is associated with local and organic ingredients. Essentially, truffle oil is olive oil plus truffles’ “disconcerting” smell."

That implies that (most) truffle oil is only different to olive oil in smell, which is a big difference from oil that tastes of either real or artificial truffel flavouring.

dragonwriter4• 10 years ago

They didn't say it tasted no different from olive oil, they said it was olive oil, with artificial flavoring added. Which is true.

Of course, "real" truffle oil is also oil from some other source (usually olive), with natural flavoring (consisting primarily of the same actual compound in the "fake" version) added (IIRC, often by proximity rather than direct contact, which keeps a lot of the elements of truffle flavor that are present in whole truffles out of the oil, achieving a result not very much unlike the "fake" truffle oil in how it differs from the flavor of whole truffles.)

dragonwriter4• 10 years ago

Scent and taste are intimately linked, and you pretty much can't change scent without changing taste (the reverse is not quite as true), and the ingredient identified, while certainly a key component of truffle's distinct scent, also is a component of truffle's distinct taste.

merraksh• 10 years ago

It is just a coincidence, obviously, but the Italian for "scam" is "truffa". Truffle itself is "tartufo".

GFK_of_xmaspast• 10 years ago

trufflexpert• 10 years ago

Ok. They can grow truffles on a farm. In fact it was really big before the world war. However it killed the price and after the war everyone had a gentleman a agreement not to do it again.

sanj• 10 years ago

[citation needed]

nkrisc• 10 years ago

This Wikipedia article talks about cultivation of truffles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truffle#Cultivation

I can not attest to the veracity of the sources however. It also makes no mention of a "gentlemen's agreement" to artificially inflate the prices of truffles.

nommm-nommm8• 10 years ago

There was an episode of Cutthroat Kitchen where a contestant used truffle oil on a dish.

Jet Tela (judge): truffle oil, man, there's just no place for it in the kitchen.

Alton Brown (host): yes there is. throws the bottle in the garbage.

Harsh.

(I do agree that using truffle oil is a sign of an amateur chef)

dagurp• 10 years ago

Reminds of this over-the-top reaction on masterchef https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJEaSGzSOqE

baby3• 10 years ago

The funny part is that Gordon Ramsay's BURGR restaurant has truffle oil in the menu: https://gordonramsayrest-2938.kxcdn.com/assets/1-Menus/USA-R...

oh_sigh• 10 years ago

I love how youtube is showing me advertisements for truffle oil right at the moment where Ramsay is completely blasting it.

Fej• 10 years ago

Alton Brown is amazing. Wish he still did Good Eats. The geekiness of it all... I think he really loved that.

(For those who don't know - he plays a caricature of himself on Cutthroat Kitchen, an angry and "evil" version, he grew the beard just for the show. Naturally his normal persona is a food geek.)

nommm-nommm8• 10 years ago

Good Eats was on for 14 years and has 252 episodes, what more can you possibly ask for? That's a good run for any show nevermind one as labor and time intensive as Good Eats.

What makes you think his Good Eats host character is his "normal persona"? He doesn't play a caricature, just a character.

steego2• 10 years ago

Truffle oil is usually a sign of an amateur chef, but I would disagree it has no place. Most people abuse it and I would include truffle fries on the list. It's a bitter and inferior truffle flavor.

However, I love finishing white mushroom pizzas with by distributing 10-15 drops of truffle oil on a medium pie. Clearly, it's not the same as shaving truffles, but it actually works well when the oil isn't cooked and it's paired with a combination of fresh and earthy flavors.

codezero• 10 years ago

And if you want to get meta angry, most olive oil isn't olive oil!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12281775

MrJagil• 10 years ago

It would be nice if there was a website where you could look up the local groceries you have in doubt. Maybe check how honest the brand is... We rate movies why not groceries?

nicolas_t• 10 years ago

It's still quite possible to buy truffle oil with real truffles but of course, it's not going to be 2.5 pounds for 250ml but instead 12 pounds for 250ml...

I usually buy this one http://www.edelices.co.uk/olive-oil-flavored-black-truffles.... which is quite good...

hdlothia• 10 years ago

Meh. The truffle fries at my local burger spot still taste good. As long as it doesn't kill me I'm not overly concerned.

crystalmeph• 10 years ago

I sort of agree.

To be clear, I don't think they should be charging extra and calling something "truffle oil" if it's got no truffle molecules in it, or "olive oil" if it's actually some other kind of vegetable oil. That should be prosecuted as false advertising.

That said, we keep hearing news like this, where what we thought was high-end "gourmet" food is actually the same as the stuff on the middle or bottom shelves at the market. And yet, we've been eating and enjoying this stuff for years. As long as it's marketed and priced honestly, I've got no problem buying and eating the cheap stuff.

tptacek7• 10 years ago

French fries and popcorn are the only two allowable venues for truffle oil.

steego2• 10 years ago

Truffle salt and fresh grated parm is really nice on popcorn.

4ad4• 10 years ago

Dunno man, the smell of gasoline really turns me off.

Actually, that's not right. I find the smell of truffle oil similar to gasoline, but I like gasoline. Truffle oil turns my stomach around.

baby3• 10 years ago

Here's on bottle I bought in Marianno's, a supermarket in the US. The bottle was around 10-15$ I think.

http://i.imgur.com/6ygdyRR.jpg

I does say olive oil, flavored, but also has a dehydrated truffle in it. Does the dehydrated truffle not contribute anything to the taste?

Also, it tastes pretty good.

karlshea• 10 years ago

Does the dehydrated truffle not contribute anything to the taste

It does not.

dragonwriter4• 10 years ago

it is olive oil mixed with 2,4-dithiapentane, a compound that makes up part of the smell of truffles and is as associated with a laboratory as Californian food is associated with local and organic ingredients.

So, what this is saying is 2,4-dithiapentane has little more to do with a laboratory than any other randomly selected ingredient, despite being linked to it in popular culture? (Or, more likely, that this is an extremely poorly chosen analogy...)

brodie78382• 10 years ago

This analogy also gave me quite a pause. I'm going with the latter, personally.

veridies• 10 years ago

Related question: where can I buy real truffles? I've had them in the past, but I have no idea where I can buy them from, online or in person, that I can trust the quality of. Anyone have any leads?

parkaboy• 10 years ago

Nicer grocery stores tend to carry them. The Central Market chain in Texas tends to have them. Accessibility may also depend where you live--much easier to find in major cities.

alfanick• 10 years ago

if you like truffles you should try morels - awesome mushrooms IMO on par with truffles

evincarofautumn• 10 years ago

One morning in college, I was walking to class and saw a cluster of morels growing near my apartment. I checked that they weren’t false morels, and resolved to pick them after I got back from class.

I returned to find that the lawn had been mown, and those poor shrooms had been blown to smithereens. :(

slr555• 10 years ago

What I find interesting is that truffle oil is often denigrated for not containing actual truffle based solely on this lack of authenticity. I have eaten white truffles in Italy, black truffles and dishes with truffle oil. From an anecdotal perspective, white truffles are damn good, black truffles are pretty damn good and truffle oil can be a nice addition. As long as you're not being defrauded, I say no harm, no foul.

Sometimes one wants to go whole hog and buy organic this and prime that and create all components of a dish from scratch. And there are many time when one simply wants an easy dish that tastes great and doesn't cost a mint.

To me the real confusion in truffedom is caused by truffles being funghi and there also being chocolate truffles. That's just wrong.

Posibyte• 10 years ago

I read in the article that truffles are outside of the domain of human ability to control its growth.

  > Truffles are the world’s most expensive food because they resist all our efforts to control them. They cannot be mass produced or meaningfully eaten out of season.

Have there been any efforts to create some controlled version of truffles to meet demand or make it more available? To me, the idea of a GMO truffle that's available year round seems pleasing.

wmil• 10 years ago

The distinctive scent/flavor is probably highly influenced by soil conditions. Also they're symbiotic with trees, and the tree health probably also affects flavors.

It'd probably be easier to GMO standard mushrooms to taste more like truffles.

leephillips• 10 years ago

The recent discovery (appeared on HN I think) about a complex, three-organism symbiotic relationship in lichens explained why it has heretofore been nearly impossible to grow them in "captivity". I wonder if there is a similar discovery waiting to be made about truffles.

munificent• 10 years ago

Yes, in fact the cultivated truffle industry is starting to get going now. In the past few years, farmed truffles have appeared on the market. I tried truffles for the first time a month ago and they came from Australia, presumably one of the new farms there.

The history of this is pretty fascinating.

Truffles grow in the roots of certain oak trees. To cultivate them, you need to plant those trees, carefully protect them from other undesired fungi, and wait 7 to 10 years for the fungus network to mature in the trees roots. Any given tree has an active lifecycle of only about 30 years, so after that, you have to replant. This process was figured out in the late 1700s. By the 1800s, there were over 100,000 acres of truffle farms in France, and truffles were a reasonably priced easily available foodstuff.

Then WWI hit. 20% of the male workforce was killed and many others had left rural areas and moved into cities. Without expertise and available labor, many truffle fields were lost. This is when they became a rare expensive luxury.

In the past few decades, after truffles became fashionable, cultivation has started again. It's only in the past few years that these new fields have begun to sell product. Going forward, you can probably expect real truffles to become more common and less expensive.

Oh, and the truffle I tried was shaved on top of a mushroom risotto. It's possibly the best tasting thing I have ever eaten.

bradleyjg• 10 years ago

There's a guy in Tennessee that's spent decades trying to grow black truffles (melanosporum) commercially. It sounds like he's having some ups and downs: http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/26/living/domestic-truffles-eatoc...

Here's his website http://tennesseetruffle.com/

danielhooper• 10 years ago

The truffle oil you buy from the grocer has a deserving reputation, it's just scented oil, but I've eaten in restaurants where their truffle oil was literally sliced black truffles in olive oil, so at least on a restaurant menu you shouldn't dismiss "truffle oil" immediately.

tptacek7• 10 years ago

Fair enough, but at least in the US, if you're not eating prix fixe or paying $30+ per plate, you should assume things that are "truffled" don't contain actual truffles.

Also: apparently (according to eGullet, at least), oil infusions of real truffle aren't all that powerful, and if you're trying to disperse truffle flavor in a fat, butter is the way to go (you end up with flecks of truffle strewn throughout).

anexprogrammer4• 10 years ago

TL;DR Why don't US consumers give a toss about consumer protection?

This comes up time and again on HN. Most recently Apple not recognising the iPhone 6 faults. US consumer protections appear to be none existant. I've long known things were more "relaxed" over there, but it seems relaxed to point of no longer even basically functional.

What the hell happened since the start of the 20th C when there were efforts both sides of the Atlantic to ensure that the food you buy is what it claims to be, unadulterated and safe? That stemmed from widespread adulteration, short measures, and often horrific safety.

Why are American consumers (Republicans included) not picketing and email bombing the Whitehouse or Congress? Do you not want to buy what you expect you're buying? Do you like paying expensive restaurants for Artisan food when they apparently buy the lot from the nearest discount wholesaler?

UK has the Tory party, who also love the market as the solution to everything, even what it patently cannot solve. Every now and then they suggest some industry voluntary agreement, or to relax some aspect of labelling. These ideas rarely hit statute, as the Tory voters are consumers too and don't want safety to be simply handed to multinationals. It's going to lose them voters, so we usually end up with something fairly acceptable. EU legislation helps greatly on this too.

We had the piece about restaurants in the US recently. That gave the impression restaurants able to lie to such an extent that the expensive "organic locally sourced salmon" you order from the menu might be none of those things.

If it were the UK, and you sold Truffle Oil containing no truffle, the retailer has broken the law and would be liable to fines and recalls(usually used for safety issues, or discovering beef isn;t). The retailer can then claim against the supplier or manufacturer.

There are legally mandated amounts where you can name something Chocolate Spread (min % choc), reduce it below and you end up in the band where you have to call it Chocolate Flavoured Spread (As found in cheaper ranges). Keep going to the point of no chocolate and you have to switch to "flavour" which can be artificial flavourings (bottom of the heap discounters). Those wordings correlate to whatever percentages or weights have been mandated.

Large retailers therefore test products for safety, legality, labelling before first sale, and they'll periodically randomly check. When this comes up, Americans often claim this isn't possible, there's simply too much stuff. Walmart (Asda) do it here, and if you look at supplier guidlines for any large UK retailers they'll all have details of the testing process you as a supplier are expected to meet.

We then have Trading Standards who randomly check products on sale for safety, especially food, and including restaurants. Breach those rules and you can go to prison, or have the business closed. They can, and do, test for the foods being what are claimed, the presence of allergens, labelling and even whether it's organic or not.

All is not perfect here, of course. The Conservatives reduced the number of Trading Standards such that the public are at higher risk (not enough to go around), and some labelling has minor loopholes such as get outs for country of origin, and the assorted terms "farm fresh", "free range" and the like. They sometimes don't legally mean what common sense and the public think they do.

So if I buy a bottle of Truffle Oil here and it has none, I can sue Tesco (not for very much I expect). Realistically I'd take it back for a refund, or more sensibly send it to Trading Standard who can send a letter with legislative force.

tptacek7• 10 years ago

Realistically anywhere you buy truffle oil, be it in the US, UK, or France, the flavor is not going to come from truffles --- regardless of whether local regs require some real truffle component in the product. Not because purveyors are chintzing out (though: they are), but because truffle oil made from real truffles isn't very potent and isn't shelf stable.

That's not a defense of truffle oil as a product. Don't bother with it.

This is a pretty silly thing to picket the White House over.

anexprogrammer4• 10 years ago

I meant about consumer protections, labelling and so on generally rather than this specific issue.

Sorry if that didn't come across well.

toolslive• 10 years ago

I wonder how long this will last after the Brexit, as this is EU legislation in action.

anexprogrammer4• 10 years ago

Well most of the framework has a long history in UK law too. I can only hope Brexit doesn't lead to significant watering down of what we have now.

CannisterFlux• 10 years ago

The US government want their scams to spread to Europe too with the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. It is all due to "lobbying", which is a politically correct way to say "bribing" in America. Corrupt US politicians doing the bidding of those multinationals, screwing over the general public. As usual.

With Brexit expect some of that EU legislation protection to disappear in Britain too. Maybe you'll get greek yoghurt instead of greek-style yoghurt now, though it might be neither Greek nor yoghurt ;-)

anexprogrammer4• 10 years ago

I don't much like the sound of any of the parts of TPP I've seen leaked.

I'm not a fan of Brexit, it's a silly idea. Doubly so if govt decide to start fiddling with the best aspects of legislation (consumer, worker and human rights protections). I imagine one of the tabloids would try and get a campaign going if they wear things down too much.

Well I hope so - I'm happy to pay a bit extra for stuff in return for the proections we have.

cmurf2• 10 years ago

Truffles, like most mushrooms, contain basically 0% fat. 0.2g of fat in a 28g truffle is basically fat free. No fat, no oil to extract.

semi-extrinsic3• 10 years ago

This hypothesis can be easily and cheaply tested: buy some nice normal mushrooms and fry them in olive oil. Does the oil taste of mushrooms afterwards?

(If you want to do it properly, carefully heat a few cups of olive oil with mushrooms in it, let it simmer for half an hour and then let it cool completely before draining.)

cmurf2• 10 years ago

I'm not suggesting there are no oil soluble materials in mushrooms. But just because there are such materials does not mean there is any such thing as "truffle oil" or "mushroom oil" in the same way there are nut, avocado, and olive oils which are produce by extraction. To actually get truffle oil would be insanely expensive and insofar as I'm aware, there's no evidence either the flavor or smell we're interested in with truffles is even in its own (minimal) fats.

apendleton• 10 years ago

Sure, but lots of "X oil" products, especially where "X" is a flavoring ingredient, are oils from other sources infused with that ingredient for taste. "Chili oil" is not "oil pressed from chilis," it's "neutral oil flavored with chilis," and nobody expects otherwise or is confused. The complaint here isn't that truffle oil isn't pressed from truffles, it's that it's neither that nor oil flavored with truffles. Truffles are not involved.

randrews• 10 years ago

Also, duck sauce contains no duck.

NoGravitas• 10 years ago

Duck sauce is a sauce you put on duck. Is truffle oil an oil you are supposed to put on truffles?

mmcclellan• 10 years ago

If this is true of Truffle salt, then I have definitely fell for it before. At least Wikipedia suggests truffle salt is not usually of synthetic origin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truffle_salt)

dredmorbius• 10 years ago

For related topics, see: fraud, signalling, Veblen goods, status, status signalling, and aspirational goods.

Something rare and expensive is used to give the appearance of quality, undercut by not only the lack of the underlying element within the good (a chemical imposter is substituted), but with either an implication or outright false representation that the aspirationally desired quality is in fact present.

There's a tremendous amount of criticism of the concept of market function in this story.

koliber• 10 years ago

There are many things that are flavored like something, but don't actually contain any extract from the actual thing. I don't think you should focus on truffle oil. This sort of thing is all around you, with many types of food.

Often times, the molecules used to flavor these foods are a major component of a flavor of a given fruit, vegetable, nuts, or fungus. However, it is sometimes cheaper to produce them synthetically rather than extract them. In many cases the stuff used to flavor the food was never in the thing whose flavor is being imitated.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoamyl_acetate is used to imbue a banana flavor.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzaldehyde gives you an almond flavor

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanillin is pretty much what you get in most vanilla-flavored things

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,4-Dithiapentane is used to make truffle-flavored oil

The list goes on and on.

It's great to be aware that there is an industry in making things that taste like other things. If you walk down your supermarket isle and pay attention, you will notice that many things are not what they seem. You will first feel surprised, maybe cheated, and perhaps angry.

Is truffle oil with truffles a scam? I don't know. I was certainly fooled once.

I now try to pay attention to these types of things more. Things flavored with actual extracts tend to cost more and are harder to find. However, with many things, once you taste the real thing, you will notice that the fake stuff is off. Often times, the synthetically flavored food taste flat, sometimes chemically, and fake.

Don't get angry. Get educated, spread the knowledge, and pay attention to what you eat!

JBReefer• 10 years ago

Why do I have to be angry? Is it not possible to appreciate that more things now taste like vanilla, which is quite expensive when extracted using traditional methods?

4ad4• 10 years ago

The problem with truffle oil is that it smells like gasoline, not that it's synthetic. It smells nothing like truffles. And it can't be made any better since the compounds that give truffles their complex signature are not soluble in oil.

There's a resemblance between rubbing alcohol filtered through bread and bourbon, just like there's a resemblance between truffle oil and real truffles, but the comparison is really apt. Even though there's some resemblance, it's nothing alike, and it's really bad.

shanev• 10 years ago

Not surprised. There are many products like this. Most commercial maple syrup for example contain no actual maple syrup, just flavored corn syrup.

dec0dedab0de• 10 years ago

Not in Vermont. http://www.npr.org/2011/02/03/133456136/Vermont-To-McDonalds...

nommm-nommm8• 10 years ago

That's "pancake syrup" or "Maple-flavoured syrup" or just "syrup." anything labeled maple syrup, by law, must be maple syrup.

kazinator• 10 years ago

Cannot parse: "it is olive oil mixed with 2,4-dithiapentane, a compound that makes up part of the smell of truffles and is as associated with a laboratory as Californian food is associated with local and organic ingredients."

Synthetic 2,4-dithiapentane is associated with some laboratory somewhere, whereas "Californian food", whatever that is, isn't necessarily "local and organic". It's not local if I'm enjoying it in New York rather than in California, and it's not organic if it didn't come from an organic farm.

aidenn0• 10 years ago

2,4-dithiapentane

Now I know what to blame when my roommate pours a couple tablespoons of truffle-oil on whatever it is she is cooking.

mmanfrin• 10 years ago

Truffle oil is just the less-scary-sounding version of adding msg to a dish. 'Truffle flavoring' is plain msg, most likely.

MSG is great for cooking, it is the taste of "Umami". Umami/Truffle/Parmesan are all just means of adding this msg taste to things without triggering the anti-MSG rhetoric.

The Family Seasoning for Steak: Lowry's Garlic Salt, black pepper, msg. Delicious.

huhtenberg3• 10 years ago

I beg to differ :)

http://i.imgur.com/RtAsZKp.jpg

This is from a fancy-ish local (European) supermarket that's generally praised for the quality food they sell. The cost was around $15.

stouset4• 10 years ago

The flavor compounds in truffles aren't oil-soluble. So even if you bought a piece of truffle dunked in oil, you're probably not getting what you hope to. If it tastes like truffles, that flavor is virtually guaranteed to not come from the truffle at the bottom but instead from 2,4-dithiapentane.

huhtenberg3• 10 years ago

Oi vey, please kindly adjust your tinfoil headwear.

They might be insoluble in theory. In practice, it's dead simple to infuse oil with truffles - take oil, heat it up, add shaved truffles and let it sit for a bit.

1812Overture• 10 years ago

Those are almost certainly random mushroom chunks and not actual truffle. A lot of brands do that as a deception.

xapata2• 10 years ago

Perhaps, but I've also bought olive oil with a whole black truffle in it.

dsego• 10 years ago

Truffles kinda lose their appeal when you have two lagottos digging some up every few days.

jheriko2• 10 years ago

i am not surprised at all.

a lot of this new fancy food type stuff is a scam... in most cases selling inferior products and scams at higher prices.

"organic" means "not made with the benefit of modern developments in agriculture" after all... i am stunned why people think this is a good thing.

noble savage "logic" perhaps?

There Are No Truffles in Truffle Oil (2014)

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