Sniffing out real truffles

(American Chemical Society) At a cost of thousands of dollars per pound, truffles are an expensive food. The fungi are prized for their distinctive aroma, and many foods claim truffles or their aromas as ingredients. But some of these foods may actually contain a much less pricey synthetic truffle compound. To help detect food fraud, researchers report in Analytical Chemistry that they have developed a technique that discriminates between these natural and synthetic compounds.