'ABOUT TRUFFLES
By JOHN WILTON I10 N days of atomic disintegration and international plain speech, not to say decreasing rations, there is perhaps comfort to be found in idle meditation on such a subject as the truffle, almost forgotten subterraneous delight of epicures and stimulant of gastro- nomes. One must relax at times ; else ideological clash and scientific prophecy of gloom destroy sanity and submerge reason. To begin, then, this brief bout of undoubted escapism, take down Guide Michelin or Les Auberges de France from dusty hibernation on the shelf. Here is much of truffles among listed specialities of the good tables of France. Here memory can. wander over a land in which fine cooking and conscientious eating were among the arts of life. Disgusting in such days as these? Perhaps. But well to remember in a moment of relaxation, before a picture of that other Ffance of today returns to haunt the imagination. Nor is to recall the good tables to think of the Chapon Fin at Bordeaux, the Trois Faisans at Dijon or Mere Fillioux at Lyons. Such places were for the Rolls-Royce, the Delage, for those who in the old days had much money and little conscience, It is to remember gratefully the Restaurant de la Gare almost anywhere you like (except perhaps in Picardy); a good meal at fifteen francs vin compris, served with grace and friendliness to strangers unlikely to pass that way again. And so, by beginning with the truffle, we can soon arrive at the essence of France, her atmosphere and beauty, beside which a mere subterranean_ fungus is as nothing. But—to get back to the subject of truffles—consider a little ancient history. There exists ample proof that both Greece and Rome esteemed its esculent qualities. Refer only to the De Re Coquinaria of the third-century epicure Caelius Apicius ; this treatise on gastronomy gives elaborate recipes for dishes composed of, or stuffed and garnished with, truffles. Even the sober Cicero relates how he was seized with such a violent attack of diarrhoea after eating several dishes at the house of one Lentulus that he was hardly able to stand for above ten days. Juvenal, Plutatch and Pliny all believed that truffles were generated during thunderstorms by fiery humours penetrating the earth. •As they grew and lived without a root after such a creation, Pliny wrote of them as among the most wondrous of living things. The Dark Ages swallowed much beside gastronomy, and perhaps the truffle lay unregarded in the woods while theologians brawled and barons robbed ; for we have no record of it again until it reappeared at the tables of the great in the fourteenth century. France adopted it from Italy, and from that day to this it has remained the ultimate touch of the haute cuisine, taken for granted at the Ritz and kept for the dish of the special occasion at the Restaurant de la Gare. To pursue meditation in another direction, there is the undoubted recent existence of that legendary animal, the truffle-hound, as a real live breed of English dog. It seems that the landless labourers of Sussex and Wiltshire in the hard days of the i85o's were hard put to it to keep alive on farm wages, and eked out their substance by truffling in the woods. Specially bred and trained dogs were used, rather on the principle of the mine-detector of more recent days. Going ahead of their masters on leads, they changed their note when a truffle was beneath, and so enabled the clandestine harvest to be gathered. Two shillings a pound and more was to be had in Trowbridge market for the fruits of such labour. Learned authors give tantalising hints that the practice still possibly exists. If it has not yet entirely perished with other rural crafts, the Kennel Club should surely act, and stabilise the breed.
In France to this day the dog is replaced by the pig as the most favoured truffle-detector, which is trained not only in the location but also excavation of the prize. Young sows are preferred as more keen and active, and are transported to the woods in special travelling carts. The sow is partially prevented from reaping the fruits of her skill by a leather strap round the mouth, but the rabassier in charge has to be quick off the mark to spear the dis- interred truffle with a pointed stick before it vanishes despite the strap. A primitive and even laughable method indeed, but the basic technique of an important industry none the less, whose output in Perigord alone runs to hundreds of tons per annum. No doubt a tractor-drawn truffle-harvester is on the way, but in the meanwhile such a survival into a technological age is a pleasant subject on which to muse.
Space forbids quotation from literature as to the estimable qualities of the truffle, but for one example the curious may be referred to Thackeray's Memories of Gourmandising, particularly to that epic meal consumed by Mr. Titmarsh and his friend at the Cafe Foy in Paris, the climax of which was a brace of truffled partridges. Let us close with a footnote on truffles false and real. The truffle market has not escaped the hand of commercialism, and it is a sad fact that many spherical fungoid growths sold as truffles are not truffles at all, but worthless and inferior plants of other species. Even in wartime it has been possible occasionally to buy in Soho at fifteen shillings the half-pound round black objects which are not truffles at all, but a fungus allied to puff-balls, with the unpalatable botanical name of Choeromyces meandriformis. It suffices to quote the article Truffle in the eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica on this suspicious vegetable: "The `false truffle' is common on the surface of the ground in woods, and is gathered by Italians and Frenchmen in Epping Forest for the inferior dining-rooms of London where Continental dishes are served. It is a worthless, offensive and possibly dangerous fungus." The nefarious practice undoubtedly goes on ; gentlemen of Mediterranean aspect still book for Epping at Liverpool Street, with furtive airs and large shopping baskets. The searcher after truffle-flavoured dishes in the lesser restaurants of London may now know what he has perhaps been eating. You have been warned.
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