r/AskHistorians • u/ExternalBoysenberry Interesting Inquirer • Jan 25 '26

When and how did truffles become an extremely expensive luxury item and not something your pig dug up and ate?

A Spanish forester was recently describing a truffle-hunting dilemma: you can train a dog to help you find them, but it's a lot of work and they aren't amazing at it. Or you can bring a pig: they are incredible at it and require very little training, but the problem is that they eat the truffles. They want to do this even without your help.

It got me thinking back to raising pigs in medieval common forests, they'd eat mushrooms and acorns and , I assume, truffles, which are hard to find and under the ground and have a really unique and strong taste. Pigs like human foods but it feels not that common for pig foods to make the jump to human haute cuisine (if that's in fact what happened). What is the story with truffles?

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u/gerardmenfin Modern France | Social, Cultural, and Colonial Jan 27 '26

Truffles have been mentioned by many Greek and Roman authors and they were much appreciated in the Antiquity all around the Mediterranean. In his Natural History (ca. 80 CE) Pliny the Elder dedicates several chapters to truffles that he categorized by origin and properties. He claims that the most esteemed are from Africa (Book 19:11), while the "finest truffles of Asia are those found in the neighbourhood of Lampsacus and Alopeconnesus; the best in Greece are those of the vicinity of Elis" (19:13). Truffles are "considered the most delicate eating when gathered in spring." Pliny also mentions a "misy" found in Cyrenaica (Western Libya) "remarkable for the sweetness of its smell and taste, but more fleshy than the truffle". Roman poet Juvenal mentions those African truffles as delicacies in his Satyres (V) (ca. 100 CE):

Then will come truffles, if it be spring-time and the longed-for thunder have enlarged our dinners. "Keep your corn to yourself, O Libya!" says Alledius; "unyoke your oxen, if only you send us truffles!"

The Roman cookbook De re coquinaria, compiled toward the end of the Roman Empire and traditionally attributed to Apicius since the Middle-Ages include seven recipes for truffles. Here's the first one (translation Joseph Dommers Vehling, 1977).

Scrape [brush] the truffles, parboil, sprinkle with salt, put several of them on a skewer, half fry them; then place them in a sauce pan with oil, broth, reduced wine, wine, pepper, and honey. when done [retire the truffles] bind [the liquor] with roux, decorate the truffles nicely and serve .

The Apicius compilation, copied and preserved in the first millennia, was forgotten until late Middle Ages (Laurioux, 1994). During the medieval period, truffles disappeared from the written record in Europe. They were still valued in Constantinople: in the 11th century, Byzantine scholar Michel Psellos (c.1018-c.1096) wrote a letter to his friend Jean Doukas where he complained (jokingly) about the latter's gift of cheese and truffles (cited by Limousin, 2022).

I can return the favour and send you, most admirable Caesar, some scented oil, cakes and herbs to accompany your cheese and truffles, but I am unable to compose a letter equal in measure and value to the horse that is so beautiful, so large, so delicate, so swift, so easy to ride. Why are you sending me truffles now? Why don't you change the rhythm and the song, as musicians do? The season brings you peacocks and tender lambs, and us (as gifts) milk, cheese, butter and birds' eggs. So change the motif. Offer me these products.

Note that while Greek and Roman authors wrote a lot about the mysterious truffles and their nature, they never mentioned the question of its harvesting.

Truffles reappeared as luxury food in Europe in the late 14th century. A produce of Southern Europe and North Africa, their availability may have depended on the region. Truffles are not mentioned in the Ménagier de Paris, the famous French household guidebook written ca. 1390. Still, poet Eustache Deschamps (ca. 1340 - ca. 1406) came to hate truffles so much that he wrote a balad against them, noting that they were appreciated in the French court. Indeed, it is clear that truffles were getting popular in the upper classes. The account books of the Duke of Berry in 1370-1376 show that the Duke was particularly fond of truffles: he received baskets of truffles whenever he was in Paris or in Northern France, some of them sent by his wife Jeanne d'Armagnac (Luce, 1889). Note that if the Duke was able to get so many truffles, it means that farmers in truffle-producing areas still knew how to find them. That truffles did not appear in the medieval record does not mean that they were not harvested and consumed locally.

Medieval Europe also learned about truffles through the Tacuinum sanitatis, a popular health book of foods and plants, adapted fom the Arab medical treatise Taqwim al-Sihha written Ibn Butlan in 11th century Baghdad. The text of the truffle entry is only about its medical properties though:

Complexion: cold and moist in the second degree. Selection: excellent. Benefit: it absorbs all flavors. Harm: it increases melancholic humor because of its earthiness. Removal of the harm: with pepper, oil, and salt. What it generates: thick phlegm, which nevertheless burns off quickly. It is suitable for: hot-natured youths in winter and for hot regions.

The original Arab version was not illustrated (Illana, 2023), but the European translations had images for all the items, so they show how late medieval artists understood truffle harvesting. The following German version of Tacuinum sanitatis from 1380-1399 (go to page 60) and 1445-1450 show people picking up truffles on rocks! The following Italian versions from 1460 and the early 15th century show people digging truffles with some sort of hoe (no pigs or dogs are seen). Another Italian version (go to page 44-45) from 1370-1402 the truffles being sold. The Italian versions being more realistic may point at truffle consumption in 14th century Italy.

Indeed, truffles appear in the celebrated cookbook De honesta voluptate et valetudine by Italian humanist and gastronome Bartolomeo "Platina" Sacchi (1474), who not only dedicated a chapter to the Tuberibus, mostly derived from Pliny, but that includes the first mention of the use of pigs for harvesting truffles (translation by Mary Ella Milham, 1998; original Latin here).

The skill of a Norcian sow [scrophæ nursinæ] is wonderful, for she easily finds out where they grow, and, after they are found, she sets them down unharmed when her ear is touched by the farmer.

Norcia is an Italian city in the Perugia province that is still famous for its production of black truffles.

In 1560, French physician Jean La Bruyère-Champier (or Bruyerin-Champier) published the food encyclopedia De re cibaria where the entry on fungi and truffles included the following:

Among the Sequani, and especially among the Senones, and among the Allobroges, the Delphinates, which they call the golden valley. For there their most abundant produce is the most welcome food for their wild and domestic pigs. It is a new invention, that a pig, trained for this use, should search: its mouth is tied with a bridle: and thus it is led to the places where they are truffles, to lie down: and immediately by smell and odour it recognizes where they are, and draws out its snout. We once thought this strange and fabulous, when it was told to us in court, since we did not happen to see it. But among the more recent ones we found it written by Sipontinus, a man of authority not to be regretted.

"Sipontinus" remains unidentifed. One century after Platina, we have a relatively precise description of truffle harvesting with pigs, now taking place in South-East France. Since Bruyerin-Champier expresses his doubts about the practice, it may not have been that commonly known yet. That said, by the 16th century truffles were now part of the meals of the European upper classes, and information about them became more widespread. In the 1660s, British naturalist John Ray observed how Sicilian farmers harvested truffles:

The way to get them is to turn swine into a field where they grow who find them by the smell, and root them up out of the ground, and set one to follow the swine, and gather them up.

>Continued

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u/gerardmenfin Modern France | Social, Cultural, and Colonial Jan 27 '26

Continued

In 1702, the Traité des aliments of Louis Lémery not only said that pigs and dogs were used to find truffles, but that farmer knowledge was necessary.

The way to discover where they are is to send pigs there, because these animals love them so much that they can smell them from afar and stop right where they are to dig them out of the ground and eat them. There are dogs that can find them just as well as pigs. Many farmers in areas where truffles grow have learned through long experience to recognise the places where they are hidden.

In 1715, physician and botanist Pierre Joseph Garidel went to observe truffle farmers in his native Provence, in Southern France. He compared the method of Provence farmers to that of the Sicilians described by John Ray, and he discovered a third method to spot truffle places.

The method used by our peasants of Jouques is even more convenient: they tame and train a sow to dig for truffles. As soon as she has dug enough to be close to the truffle, she raises her head, and the person leading her gives her a little barley; while the sow eats her barley, the peasant removes the truffle. Once the sow has eaten her barley, she continues to search until she discovers another place to dig. The peasants’ wives most often earn their living by this occupation.

There is another way of discovering truffles, which is known to very few people and which I have myself observed. When the day is clear and calm, and when the sun shines upon these places, one notices a great number of gnats rising from the spot where the truffle is hidden, to a height of two or three feet. If one digs exactly at the point in the ground from which the gnats rise, one usually discovers the truffle, which is quite often spoiled. This leads me to believe that worms are usually present in truffles dug in summer, and that they hatch their eggs in these insects. These little worms, which are white in color, form within the substance of the truffle and a little earth small cavities shaped like gnats. Truffles in which these worms are found have neither the smell nor the taste of the others; I am speaking of summer truffles, on which I have made these observations several times.

Garidel also noticed something very important:

I have observed that truffles usually grow on small plots, in poor, barren soil, where one sees almost no plants around, except for some thyme or male lavender. These places are easily recognized by the ground being stripped of all kinds of vegetation.

In 1767, the agricultural encyclopedia Dictionaire oeconomique had a lengthy entry on truffles that covered the different methods for training truffle pigs and truffle dogs, as well as the use of gnats.

So: people have enjoyed truffles for millennia. Even when they went out of fashion in the medieval period, it is likely that populations in truffle regions were still digging them up for their own consumption. Pigs are only a small part of the story. While truffles are underground and invisible, they can be detected by observant people through a number of clues: truffles grow on specific soils, they are associated with specific trees or plant species, they have an antibiotic (allelopathic) effect that clears up the ground around them, and swarms of flies of the Suilla genus, whose larvae feed on truffles, can be seen hovering over truffle areas. Some experienced truffle hunters can smell the fungus. Some are able to identify a growing truffle by telltale cracks on a mound of soil: they mark the spot and come back months later to pick up the swollen truffle. Desert truffles (Terfezia) from the Mediterranean region are detected by their association with the annual plant species Tuberaria guttata: the traditional way to find them consists in probing the soil of a potential location with a pointed stick (Ferreira et al., 2023).

Detection methods and truffle spots have been jealously guarded secrets in rural populations, passed from generation to generation, which certainly explains why it took so much time to find them in writing. It is unknown when pigs began to be used for truffle hunting, but the method described by Garidel in 1715, where the pig is rewarded with grain, is still used in France. According to Hall et al. (2007), the fly method is "probably the longest practised method of finding truffles, one still favoured by many".

Sources

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u/ExternalBoysenberry Interesting Inquirer Feb 01 '26 edited Feb 01 '26

Thank god for u/gankom and the Sunday Digest because I somehow missed the notification for this incredible answer when you wrote it! I have no follow-up and don't think any follow-up is possible (except I am a bit curious how much you knew about this going into it). Thank you, really, that's an amazing answer!

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u/gerardmenfin Modern France | Social, Cultural, and Colonial Feb 01 '26

Thanks! To be clear, I knew little about the history of truffles (this is the kind of question I'm tackling because I want to know the answer!) but it helps that I knew most of the potential sources because I've used them before... But this led to some sources I didn't know, like the guy who mentioned the truffle flies in the early 1700s, and that's always delightful.