What is a black truffle?

Black truffle is a kind of wild edible fungus growing underground, also known as truffle, motherless fruit, etc., with a rugged appearance, with a color between dark brown and black, a small bulge, gray or light black and white texture, and its smell is special and indescribable. Some people describe it as mushroom, garlic, rotten leaves, wetlands, fermented corn, pickled pickles, honey, gas, wet straw, cheese, cinnamon, Milu incense. There are also sheets that have not been washed for years, and some even describe them as smelling like semen, which is known to be mainly distributed in a few areas of the Alps and the Himalayas.

The black truffle is very picky about the growing environment and cannot grow as long as there is a slight change in sunlight, moisture or the pH of the soil. it is the only delicacy in the world that cannot be planted in an orderly manner. Truffles grow under one tree, but another tree that looks exactly the same next to it can't, and people still don't know why. Unlike general fungi such as mushrooms, truffle spores are spread not by the wind, but by animals that eat truffles, mainly under pine, oak, hazel, beech and orange trees. this is because truffles cannot survive independently through photosynthesis and must rely on symbiotic relationships with certain roots to obtain nutrients.

Black truffles usually mature from November to March each year, and the best season is usually between December and March of the following year. The people who collect truffles are called "truffle hunters". Each truffle hunter has a family treasure map, recording the place, time and size of the truffles found by their parents. The process of finding truffles is interesting, and hunters from different countries use different methods. In France, sows are used as right-hand men to harvest black truffles. Sows have such a good sense of smell that they can smell truffles buried in the ground at a depth of 25 to 30 centimeters from 6 meters away.

Black truffle is rich in protein, 18 kinds of amino acids (including 8 essential amino acids that cannot be synthesized by human body), unsaturated fatty acids, multivitamins, zinc, manganese, iron, calcium, phosphorus, selenium and other essential trace elements, as well as sphingolipids, cerebrosides, ceramides, triterpenes, androsterone, adenosine, truffle acid, sterols, truffle polysaccharides, truffle polypeptides and other metabolites, which have high nutrition and health care value. Among them, male ketone has the remarkable effect of aiding yang and regulating endocrine. Sphingolipids have obvious activities in preventing senile dementia, atherosclerosis and anti-tumor cytotoxicity. Polysaccharides, peptides and triterpenes can enhance immunity, anti-aging, anti-fatigue and other functions, and can be used for health care.

The taste of black truffle is very peculiar. The smell of mushroom, garlic, wet mud, honey, corn, bedbugs and rotten leaves has been used to describe the smell of truffle. Some people often say that they smell of musk, semen and unwashed bed sheets. Professional perfumers even describe the smell of gasoline mixed with some garlic and rotten eggs, of course, the smell of fallen leaves accumulating and fermenting in some forest wetlands. Everyone comes to a different conclusion on what it tastes like when mixed with a hint of yeast and honey.

In the past 2000 years, black truffles were found only in the southern Alps of Europe, which is the main reason why Chinese people are unfamiliar with black truffles. At the end of the last century, Chinese scientists discovered the distribution of black truffles in the southeast of the Himalayas, which caused a sensation all over the world. Since then, all Chinese-made black truffles have been used for export. In recent years, the textual research on the folk application of truffle production areas shows that, in fact, in the Tibetan, Yi and other minority areas in southwest China, the black truffle, which has been called "no mother fruit" for hundreds of years, has long been used by local mountain people to strengthen their physical strength, improve their sexual ability, and recuperate women's menstrual blood.