Truffade

Appears in
Mourjou: The Life and Food of an Auvergne Village
Mourjou

By Peter Graham

Published 1999

  • About
This dish, like the previous one, used to be one of the dishes it was convenient for Auvergnat cowherds to make when they spent the summer months up in the mountains, milking their cows and making Cantal cheese. The ingredients that go into the two dishes are very similar, yet, thanks to the versatility of potatoes, the result is not at all the same.

When people see the word truffade for the first time on a restaurant menu, they assume it must contain truffles (truffes). There is in fact a connection even though the mushroom is not and never has been used in the dish. When the potato was introduced from South America into the Auvergne toward the end of the eighteenth century, the local population nicknamed it trufa (truffle) in Occitan, or langue d’oc, the language they then spoke almost exclusively. They probably chose trufa because of the potato’s shape, earthy origin and colour (the first potatoes that came to France were fairly dark-skinned). Although given the name of a much-prized delicacy, the potato initially aroused much suspicion when it was introduced into the Auvergne.