Truffles for love
Truffles are not a true aphrodisiac. It is not known exactly since when people believed that the truffle was a love remedy. The first concrete mentions are found in the work "The Banquet of the Scholars" by the Greek writer Athenaios from the 2nd century AD. In it, he chats about the customs and traditions of the Greeks and about their food. "Bake the tubers in ashes, pour sauce over them and then eat as much of them as you can. That will strengthen a man's cock!", is drastically quoted there from a play. - But were the tubers really truffles?
The philosopher Aristotle is said to have written in the 3rd century BC that the truffle was dedicated to Aphrodite, the goddess of love. But this is a legend for which there is no reliable source. The story that the physician Galenus called the truffle a love remedy in the 2nd century AD and therefore prescribed it to Emperor Marcus Aurelius is just as fictitious. Nor are there any quotations about truffles promoting love-making in the works of the often-cited scholars Pythagoras, Theophrastus or Avicenna.
Nevertheless, the belief in the exciting effects of truffles became established. The Italian physician Giovanni Savonarola mentioned truffles around 1450 in his book on food and wrote: "They are a meal for old men who have a beautiful wife".
In the first ever printed cookbook in history, published in 1475, Platina, whose real name was Bartolomeo Sacchi, writes:
The truffle "is an exciter of lust, hence it is often served at the exciting banquets of rich and highly educated men, who wish to be better prepared for the pleasures of Venus. Which, when done for the purpose of procreation, is praiseworthy, while when done for the purpose of lust (as many idle and intemperate are wont to do), is very detestable."
Sources: Volbracht C. (2020): Die Trüffel. Fake & Facts; Athénee (1789): Banquet dês Savans, Traduit par Lefebvre de Villebrune. Paris. 1st book; Berti, G. (2019). Eros e tartufi . Storia di un afrodisiaco; Platina (1517): De honesta voluptate. Ch. 348. quoted from the Italian translation by Emilio Faccioli: Il piacere onesto e la buona salute (1985). P. 210; Savonarola, M. (1515): De tute le cose che se manzano comunamente (quoted after Berti); Brillat-Savarin, A. (1826/1864): Physiologie du Goût.
Anselme Brillat-Savarin, the great French gastrosophist who called the truffle the "diamond of the kitchen", knew it as early as 1826: truffles are not a true aphrodisiac. Their consumption is stimulating, but the tuber does not contain any substances that promote the desire for love. Brillat-Savarin wrote in his "Physiology of Taste":
"The truffle is by no means an effective aphrodisiac, but it can make women more yielding and men more amiable in certain situations."
The boar's sex scent?
In our time, the belief in the sexually arousing effect of the truffle was strengthened by the discovery of German researchers that the Périgord truffle contains adrostenol, an aromatic substance with which the boar lures the sows to mate. The substance is also found in human armpit sweat. The theory held for almost ten years, until researchers from France discovered in 1990 that pigs and dogs do not sniff out the androstenol in the truffles, but dimethyl sulphide. This is a substance that, in low concentrations, is also responsible for the special smell of the sea.