John Snell, age 9, of Douglass, Kan., for his question:
What is a truffle?
It is a plant, but it has no pretty green leaves. In fact, the truffle is not at all a pretty plant. You might say it is shy, for it never pokes its head above the ground. It is very good to eat, and peopie say that it tastes better than almost anything in the world.
The truffle is a timid cousin of the tasty mushroom. It spends all its life hidden in the ground from peopie and pigs, bunnies and goats and many other animals that want to eat it. The truffle tastes better than the mushroom, and it has a few extra smells and flavors that are not in any other food. Master cooks slice it thin and use the tiny pieces to flavor gravies and meat dishes.
Master cooks go to a lot of trouble to capture a truffle, for it is very hard To find. It is a rare plant, and all of it is buried in the soil. So far as we know it does not grow in the Americas. The people who search for it often find it in certain woodsy parts of France and Germany.
They search for it in rich, chalky soil around the roots of oak and ash trees. As a rule, a person needs help to find a truffle. He needs a nose that is sharper than a human nose to sme11 out the hidden treasure. In truffle country, peop1e use trained dogs, pigs or even goats to help in the search. The animal is held on a string and coaxed to sniff around the soil.
The trained truffle hunter suddenly gets excited and starts to paw the ground. He wants to eat the buried truffle, but his master pulls him away and carefully digs up the tasty treasure for himself. The animal is rewarded with a scrap of some other favorite food.
The shy truffle is a round ball, perhaps as big as an orange. It may be much smaller, but it is worth taking even if it is no bigger than a pea. The soft ball may be pasty white or dingy gray, smudgy brown or sooty black. Its skin may be as smooth as that of a mushroom, but it is usually covered with bumpy warts. The truffle is not a tempting sight, but its flavor of meaty mushroom is enough to make your mouth water.
The truffle is a fungus plant, and its cousins are the mushrooms and the toadstools it has no greenery to make its own food from air, water and sunlight as most plants do. For this reason it must live in very rich and loamy soil where there is plenty of food from decaying leaves. Rotting logs and tree roots also provide the ready made plant food a truffle needs.