I Know What Truffles Smell Like

A truffle crossed my path yesterday. A ripe White Oregon Truffle. Perhaps an overripe one… Maybe an underripe one (though the color was developed as it is supposed to be). I do not know at this point. I am not a lover of fungus and had never seen, much less smelled a truffle, before yesterday. But as the question of describing the smell of truffles is one that is asked over and over, I thought I’d have a go at describing the odor, for anyone who wonders what a truffle smells like.

I cannot speak for ALL truffles, of course. But this is an approximation of the smell of this one.

Take 1 pair of old gym socks which have been worn by a teenager who has been wearing his shoes without socks for at least three weeks and then decided to put on a pair of socks and sweat in them for four days.

 

Dip the toe in vodka.

 

Wrap it around a piece of meat that has been left out to age until it is overripe and then halfway roasted.

 

Put it in your fridge and close the door for at least 4 hours.

 

Open the fridge door again, and breathe deeply.

This is what this truffle smelled like.

Sharply revolting.

Fortunately, after smelling this one, I had the opportunity to smell a fresh ripe truffle. Two, actually – one black, one white (lest one esteem us to be racist, we are fair in our sampling!).

It smells somewhat of chocolate – the same kind of sweet, mellow and rich odor, only not entirely so.

VERY STRONGLY SCENTED!!

I put them in the fridge to ripen, just as instructed. I knew when they were ripe. The whole kitchen smelled of truffle. Opening the fridge released it into the entire house.

I now have truffle butter, and the butter never even came out of the wrapper, and did not contact the truffle at all. Seriously.

I don’t think I’m a real fan of truffles, but they do smell nice when they are not overripe and fermenting, as the first one was.

The overpowering smell of them does enlighten me as to why truffles are used sparingly.  They simply overwhelm everything they get near.

Of course, I am NOT a lover of mushrooms. So my opinion on the matter may be completely irrelevant. I have discovered a few mushrooms that I can tolerate, and one or two that I actually LIKE as far as flavor is concerned. The texture still grosses me out. But the smell of a fermenting truffle was a new level of revolting for me. Underneath all those nasty smells, lurks an odor that holds the promise of having associated with something NOT revolting, at least briefly (and the fresh ripe truffles did prove this).

Historically, female pigs were used to find truffles. The truffle, it is said, has an odor that is reminiscent of male pig pheromones, which makes the female pig hone in on it, dig it up, and consume it with delight. Not so sure what that says about how a sow treats a boar… But anyway, I think it says a lot about the odor of a truffle, and if the boar smells like he rolled in chocolate I’m not sure I can blame her for her delight about it, but I suspect he does not! A boar in rut just isn’t likely to be the most pleasant smelling thing in the world, and I suspect he smells more like the first truffle than the successors. After smelling that truffle, I am thinking the boar in rut is something akin to the smell of that coyote that rolled under the car after I hit it on Highway 30 in Wyoming… RANKLY OFFENSIVE. If you stuff a rotting truffle up inside the venting of someone’s car, that would prove a good practical joke – they’d be at the mechanic demanding that he find whatever died in there!

Learning about so many mushrooms (we now have more than 100 species of mushroom spawn for sale) has been interesting. And truffles have been one of the most unpleasant, and one of the more pleasant (though overpowering) of mushroom scents in all that we have collected.