# Truffle (Tuber melanosporum)

**Tuber melanosporum*, *T. magnatum**

**Known today as.** Underground fruiting bodies of fungi that live with the roots of oak and hazel.

Kind: Fungus  
Qualities: Cold and moist, as Galen held of all mushrooms.

## What was it used for?

A food of princes, and in old medicine a heating aphrodisiac.

## What does modern science say?

Found by pigs and dogs through their smell, which mimics a pig sex hormone.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **dimethyl sulfide**: the scent the pig and the dog find
- **androstenol**: a boar pheromone, found in the black truffle in 1981

**Mechanism.** The scent compounds; nothing medicinal. Androstenol was proposed in 1981 to explain the sow’s eagerness, but pigs ignore the pure steroid and follow dimethyl sulfide (Talou, 1990); the dog has replaced the sow because it does not eat the find.

**Dose.** None.

**Standing.** A food.

## What lore surrounds it?

Plutarch asks at table why truffles were thought to be born of thunder. Brillat-Savarin called the truffle the diamond of the kitchen.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Pliny.** Of the marvels of Nature “the very greatest of all, beyond a doubt, is the fact that any plant should spring up and grow without a root,” and such is the truffle, “connected with it by no fibres, not so much as a single thread even,” which he concludes is “nothing else but a callous concretion of the earth”: it grows in dry sandy soils, often larger than a quince and weighing a pound, in two kinds, one full of sand and bad for the teeth, red or black outside and white within, those of Africa the most esteemed; they come after autumn showers and thunderstorms, “thunder contributing more particularly to their developement,” last no more than a year, and are most delicate in spring.

## Sources

- Plutarch, *Table Talk*.
- Brillat-Savarin, J. A. (1825). *Physiologie du goût*.
- Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* 19.11, 19.13, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library.
- Talou, T., et al. (1990). “Dimethyl sulphide: the secret for black truffle hunting by animals?” *Mycological Research* 94.

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*Truffle.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/truffle

Historical description, not medical advice.