Maybe already known by the time of Egyptians and Babylonian, the truffle has been object of "scientific surveying” during the second century b.C. by Teofrasto from Ereso, student of Aristotele of Stagira.

Greeks called it Hydnon (from which derives the term “Hydnology”, that indicates and designs the science related to truffles) or Idra; latins called it Tuber, deriving from the verb “tumere” (to swell), Arabians called it Ramech Alchamech Tufus or Tomer and Kemas; Spanish defined it Turma de Tierra o Cadilla de Tierra, French used the term truff (deriving from the meaning of swindle linked to the teatral rappresentation by Moliere Tartufe of 1664; English called it Truffle and Deutsch Hirstbrunst or Truffel

Galeno, the first systematic doctor, in the second century b.C. said that truffle “was not only a very nourishing food, but that it predisposed to sexual pleasures. This presumed aphrodisiac quality attributed to truffle has been confirmed by Romans too, who wanted to pose the truffle under the protection of Venus.

In the middle age, maybe because of the its formation, the truffle was looked at with suspicion. To this, it must be added its fame of “powerful aphrodisiac” that probably led it to its momentary eclipses, due to a “demoniac presence”

During the renaissance period, with the discover of the practices of Romans and Greeks, truffle comes back in the royal banquets, up to the point to be praised in one of Petrarca’s sonnets that, talking about the heart that “dentro dove giammai non si aggiorna / gravida fa di sé il terrestre umore; / onde tal frutto e simile si colga" In the Renaissance the art of knowing the truffle becomes better and better and are found the most good species: tuber magnatum e tuber malanosporum. The truffle becomes the essential complement of every banquet.

In the 16th century in Padova is published the first treatise of mycology: the Opusculum de Tiberius by Alfonso Ciccarelli, a doctor from Bevagna (perugia), that was a treatise about Spoleto’s truffles.

Today the truffle. Especially the white one (Tuber magnatum pico) is more and more the protagonist of special and extremely rafines plates. Anyway, even if the market of tuber magnatum pico has become grater and greater, production hasn’t followed this trend because of the pollution, of environmental degrade, natural ambient of truffle are reducing in number. For these reasons, in fact, some initiatives have been undertaken to preserve those ambient that allow the increase of the truffle, and on the other hand has been started a experimentation through artificial ambient of truffle, produced by human talent.

To make particularly precious this tuber is the great difficult to realize an artificial cultivations, because it is based on a symbiotic relationship between the truffle and the tree (MICORIZZAZIONE: the symbiosis in which the truffle lives with the roots of the plants to which it ceases water and salt absorbed by the terrain and from which it receives carbohydrates already elaborated, that is the nutriment) that is difficult to reproduce artificially.