The Hunt for Britain's Black Diamonds | Ambrosia Magazine
First published in Ambrosia Magazine, Volume 6: London Edition (June 2019)
“Presently, we were aware of an odour gradually coming towards us, something musky, fiery, savoury, mysterious,—a hot drowsy smell, that lulls the senses, and yet enflames them,—the truffles were coming!”
– William Makepeace Thackeray
The truffles are indeed coming…and these elusive delicacies are no longer exclusive to French dining tables, nor the famous truffle producing hills of Northern Italy. Unbeknown to many, they can be found right here in Britain, growing natively and in abundance.
Truffle connoisseurs have long praised the French Perigord black and the Italian white truffle—both of which experience a demand so high that it cannot be met, resulting in prices that can rise in excess of €10,000 per kilogram. Though lesser known than its continental cousins, for those in the know, the British ‘Summer Truffle’ Tuber Aestivum and the British ‘Autumn Truffle’ Tuber Uncinatum, are also prized for their culinary value.
The subtly sweet, earthy and nutty flavor of summer truffles, which ripen in early May and continue to fruit until autumn, is said to be less pronounced than the Italian and French varieties; but, for those who find truffle overpowering, this can be a bonus. British autumn truffle, on the other hand, has a deeper, more intense flavor, commanding a higher price than the summer pickings. DNA sequencing has revealed that the two British varieties are in fact the same species, but the time at which they are harvested lends them a different taste and intensity. Both varieties are best served as a garnish, shaved onto dishes like risotto or pasta. Alternatively, they can be used as a powerful means of infusing and enhancing even the simplest ingredients, such as eggs and cheese. The key is to be more generous with it than you would with the most prized continental varieties. It might take a whole British truffle to equal the impact (albeit, sadly, not the flavour) produced by a few shavings of the Perigord black or Italian white truffle, but when built up generously in this way, British truffle is perfectly capable of achieving the exquisite sensory experience that has kept truffles in high demand since Roman times.
“The Roman poet Juvenal attributed the birth of the truffle to a thunderbolt thrown by Jupiter at the roots of an oak tree. ”
For centuries, truffles have mystified those who stumble upon them. Early attempts to explain these peculiar underground growths concluded that they were a product of miraculous origin—for what other way could these oddities bearing no stem, leaves, or roots have been formed? The Roman poet Juvenal attributed the birth of the truffle to a thunderbolt thrown by Jupiter at the roots of an oak tree. As a mythical character known for his conspicuous sexual activity, the link to Jupiter established the truffle’s long-surviving reputation as an aphrodisiac—a reputation reinforced by its deep, musky aroma and of course by the euphoria described by those who have feasted upon them. In fact, the only thing sensually at odds with this association is the undeniable ugliness of the truffle. To look upon it aesthetically is to see a hard, potato-shaped object, with a lumpy, wart-covered exterior. Emerging from the soil (as they sometimes do), to the uninitiated, they could easily be dismissed as dried animal feces.
That truffles are so coveted is partly due to how elusive they are—not only for their rarity (their natural habitat abroad is in decline due to human impact on the environment), but also because they are so challenging to find. As Marion Dean notes in Discovering the Great British Truffle, “As the truffle forms, it is hidden from view. When the truffle matures, it is hidden from view. Dwell on these thoughts for just a moment or two. I am sure you will begin to appreciate some of the problems connected with truffles.”
Herein lies the role of the domestic animal in the truffle hunt. The primary indicator as to where a truffle is hidden (particularly a ripe truffle that is ready to harvest) is its aroma—one which, when buried underground, requires a nose more sensitive than a human’s.
It’s said that truffles contain androstenol, a sex hormone that is found in the saliva and sweat of male pigs, making truffles particularly appealing to sows. For this reason, historically, female pigs were often employed for the hunt. However, many truffle hunters lost not just the majority of their bounty to these greedy and difficult to control animals, but also their fingers too. Dogs on the other hand proved more willing to hand over their finds in exchange for an appropriate reward. Although training them requires great tenacity on the part of the dog and handler, dogs are far more responsive than pigs and generally make better companions on long days out in the woods.
In Britain, the first documented truffles were found in Northamptonshire over three centuries ago. By the 19th century, British truffling was a small but thriving cottage industry. The south-facing, broad-leafed woodlands of Southern England, with their high-pH soils and free-draining, chalk bedrocks, provided an idyllic environment for truffles. The warmth of the summer sunshine together with the moisture brought by summer showers ensured the truffles reached maturity. Amongst the root systems of the coppiced beech, oak, hazel, hornbeam, lime, and birch trees that they favour, the truffles enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with their host trees, drawing energy through carbohydrates from their roots in exchange for water and nutrients.
“Collins took to his grave not just the knowledge of how to locate and unearth truffle, but also a precious mental map of British woodlands and the secret, undocumented locations in which truffles could be found.
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Historically, the town of Winterslow was the epicentre of the British truffle trade. It was home to Britain’s most famous truffle hunter Eli Collins, who once uncovered a whopping two-pound truffle. So large and spectacular was this find that it was gifted to Queen Victoria. His son Alfred is said to have been Britain’s last great professional truffle hunter, retiring in the 1930s. At the peak of the trade, Winterslow’s post office became known for the scent of truffles it bore, seeping from the steady flow of tubers passing through it as the Collins’ bounty was boxed up and sent off around the country.
A number of factors are said to have contributed to the industry’s decline—most notably the Second World War, which claimed the lives of many of the last truffle hunters. Growing conditions for fungi also deteriorated as ancient woodlands were felled to make room for roads. In the case of the Collins family, however, it was Alfred’s unexplained decision not to pass on his knowledge that brought an end to his family legacy, much to the regret of his Wiltshire-based ancestors today. Collins took to his grave not just the knowledge of how to locate and unearth truffle, but also a precious mental map of British woodlands and the secret, undocumented locations in which truffles could be found.
Melissa Waddingham, a professional truffle and mushroom hunter based in Sussex, near London, is part of a new generation of foragers committed to reviving this knowledge and rediscovering the lost map of British truffles.
It was a combination of her love for the outdoors and a desire to put wholesome, organic food on the family dining table that led Waddingham to start foraging. Hearing whispers of truffle finds along the South Downs circa 2004, she was presented with the ultimate in mushroom hunting challenges: Could she really discover a truffle for herself right here in Britain? Stories of truffle discoveries were rare, and the majority of truffling tales were ones of years of fruitless hunting, even with the help of trained hounds. Convinced she would never find the elusive treasure with just her human senses to guide her, she made a promise to herself that if she ever did, she would immediately buy and train her own truffle hound.
“In my ignorance, on my first hunt I got out a map and circled the area I thought I’d find truffle for all the various different reasons I was armed with. I thought that wood looks big enough, it’s facing the right way, it’s chalk soil, it’s got the right tree species…it ticked all the boxes. I can’t reveal the precise location but when I got there, I thought eurgh…it was heavily dog walked, not quite what I’d expected.”
““When we opened the car door, the smell was just bonkers. We just knew it was truffle.””
“I was walking and came to this beautiful, majestic avenue of beech trees. I got on my hands and knees and started looking around this almighty tree. I was going through the leaves. I promise you after about ten minutes this thing sort of bounces out of the leaf litter and rolls away from me.”
“It looked like the truffles in the books—but there was no smell.” Twenty minutes of continued searching revealed another dozen or so similar growths. The absence not just of the pungent odour one associates with truffles, but of any smell at all left her confused as to what exactly it was she had found. Together with some friends, she drove to a nearby pub for an uncertain, half-celebration, leaving the unidentified bounty in the car. Half a pint later, they returned.
“When we opened the car door, the smell was just bonkers. We just knew it was truffle.” Elated, the group ran back to the pub for a second, far more enthusiastic celebration. With hindsight and experience to guide her, Waddingham notes that the smell of a truffle is constantly changing, developing as they ripen—so in fact, when discovering truffles early in the season, the aromas may be subdued. “What I should have done was sniff the soil”, she says—for there she would have found a distinct and unmissable sweetness, indicative of truffles.
True to her promise, Waddingham now has three working dogs, Zebedee, Ela and the newest addition, Aesti (named after the British summer truffle Tuber Aestivum). All three were trained by Waddingham to hunt for truffles—a service she now offers to other dog owners alongside her education programmes and group forages.
Despite being licensed as a professional forager, Waddingham prefers to harvest only for personal consumption. Even when on a group foray, she sticks within the kilo-and-a-half legal limit set for one individual, splitting this allowance between the group.
Overharvesting a site poses risks to future supplies. For this reason, and to prevent unlicensed foraging that might damage the delicate ecosystems in which truffles thrive, professional foragers continue to keep secret the locations in which truffles have successfully been harvested, meaning that even today, the truffle industry remains one in which secrecy abounds.
Waddingham not only always leaves some truffles behind in the ground, but she also makes a point of gathering and drying all her excess truffle scrapings as one might do with vegetable peel. She returns these precious spores to the woodlands where they wait like seeds—a process which mimics the natural ecosystem in which animals would eat the truffles and redistribute the spores through their droppings.
British truffles prefer shallow soils, lending themselves to the odd spontaneous find as they occasionally rise to the surface. Consequently, they have been found in some of the most unlikely corners of Britain.
When questioned on their presence in London, Waddingham replies assertively; “Oh yes, there is truffle in London.” For obvious reasons, Waddingham will not reveal the specifics of these locations, though she does note that one is a protected area—a Site of Scientific Interest (SSI)—on which truffle should not be hunted. Other finds have been documented in places as bizarre as school playgrounds and even in Wormwood Scrubs (a West London prison).
“...most truffle oil—up to 98%, according to some experts—is entirely synthetic, containing no truffle whatsoever.”
On an academic level, the holy grail of truffle research has been focused on their artificial cultivation. Spore-infected trees are now readily available, and where conditions are right, these trees have borne plentiful British truffles among their roots. In 2017, in an unexpected development during an experiment to monitor the growth of inoculated Mediterranean oak trees in Wales, a Perigord black truffle (one of the most highly valued species in the world) was successfully harvested—the first time such a high value species has successfully been grown in Britain. Such developments indicate Britain’s climate is warming and becoming more favourable to truffle.
With provenance becoming a more and more important consideration for restaurants, top London chefs are increasingly sourcing British truffles for their menus. The Harrow, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Little Bedwyn, was one of the first restaurants to feature British truffle on its menu back in 2004 after a local landowner unexpectedly unearthed around £33,000 worth of summer truffle and took it to head chef Roger Jones for identification.
The successful cultivation of truffles from spore-infected trees has enabled restaurants to have a continual supply from flourishing British plantations. But alongside this steady stream, truffle suppliers such as James Painter of Sybaritic Ltd are also ensuring the old tradition of the individual hunter and their hounds survive. Four years ago, he bought his first wild British truffle direct from Waddingham—meeting her at a motorway service station where he negotiated a deal for the freshly unearthed truffle sitting in her car boot. Since then he’s done many more deals in car parks and service stations across the country—directly with the truffle hunters themselves. In season, he now collects 10 to 15 kilos of British truffle a week in this way.
As ripe truffle is best consumed fresh, the ability to get British truffle from ground to plate within a matter of hours (unlike the truffle imported from Europe) is a game-changer, completely transforming the way in which truffles can be experienced in London restaurants. For those wishing to try it, Chef Mark Hix, celebrated for his unrivalled use of ingredients with provenance, is a regular client of Painter’s, and fresh, wild, British truffle picked by the likes of Waddingham often makes it onto the menu of his London restaurant Hix Soho.
But before you rush to order a portion of truffle fries, or swoon over the aroma of truffle rising from the oil on your prosciutto-covered pizza, a word of warning on the use of truffle oils: real truffle oil is as rare and expensive as real truffles. In fact, most truffle oil—up to 98%, according to some experts—is entirely synthetic, containing no truffle whatsoever. What it does contain is laboratory-produced 2,4-dithiapentane—just one of the hundreds of aromatic molecules found in real truffles. Sadly, the one-dimensional flavor of synthetic truffle oil, described by Chef Gordon Ramsay as “one of the most pungent, ridiculous ingredients ever known to chefs” has become widely (and falsely) accepted as representative of the true truffle experience.
The problem with truffle oil is that there is no easy way to commercially produce the genuine article, as truffle will spoil if left in oil, carrying a risk of Botulism— which, although rare, can be fatal. The only way to safely get around this is to boil the truffle to such a high degree that any flavor would be lost, making the endeavour a pointless one—hence synthetic oils filling this gap in the commercial market.
But, if you are lucky enough to actually find and harvest your own British truffle as you wander through the woodlands, you can of course infuse your own oil. Just be certain to consume it quickly whilst the truffle is still fresh. Or better still, forget the oil and make yourself a batch of truffle butter which can be frozen easily and therefore safely stored—melt this into mash or generously rub it under the skin of a free-range chicken, allowing the fats to act as a glue for the magnificent odour—and indeed, you will witness how truffle can make the very simplest of things divine.
Photography by Stuart Milne
