HEN I eat truffles,’ remarked a particularly passionate gourmand to the novelist Alexander Dumas, ‘I become livelier, gayer and more alert; I feel internally, especially in my veins, a sweet and voluptuous warmth.’ , better known as the Périgord black truffle, can have that sort of effect. And, although the fungus is not much to look at—a rather ugly, tuberculous lump—the scent teeters on the divine; musty
