The original truffle is a subterranean fungus that is harvested mainly in France: black truffles in Perigord and white truffles in Piedmont. The Larousse Gastronomique gives three pages of recipes for preparing truffles, which is an indication of their relative importance in haute cuisine. By comparison, jam gets slightly less than two pages in this fine reference work.

Truffles tend to be fabulously expensive, a side-effect of the fact that they are not commercially cultivated. Rather, they are gathered in the woods, between November and May, by cranky old French truffle-hunters, who use either specially-trained dogs or specially-trained pigs to locate the fungi by smell. Truffles prefer loose, humid soil, and nourish themselves on the roots of oak or elm trees.

Brillat-Savarin says of the truffle, 'The truffle is not exactly an aphrodisiac, but it tends to make women more tender and men more likeable'.

For some reason, the term truffle is also applied to round chocolates with a creamy filling purveyed by firms such as Godiva. This is most likely because the round dark shape is reminiscent of that of an actual truffle, at least of the black ones. There is, however, no similarity in taste... probably a good thing, as mushroom-flavoured chocolates probably would not sell at all well.

Conversely, if one is ordering a truffle omelette, one should expect not to find chocolate inside of it.