Lone Linguine With White Truffle Oil

Our answer

Truffle oil can be made in two ways, by soaking truffles in oil to infuse the oil with flavour or by adding the aroma of truffle to an oil. The first method will give a very natural flavour but is extremely expensive and it is very difficult to find an infused truffle oil.

Most commercial truffle oil is made by mixing olive oil with 2,4-dithiapentane. This is one of the chemicals that make up the truffle's flavour and aroma. Hence most oil you will find will be labelled as oil "with white truffle aroma". 2,4-dithiapentane is only one of the compounds found in a natural truffle and this flavour can be quite assertive, hence some people don't like the flavour of commercial truffle oil and Nigella only suggests using a few drops of truffle oil in her Lone Linguine recipe (from Kitchen).