The truffle on your truffle fries probably isn’t truffle

I’ve never been into truffle infused flavor and I suddenly feel very justified in this.

There are no white and black winter truffles out of season. They cannot be frozen, cooked, sterilized, packaged, or stored. If you had a dish with an intense truffle flavor out of season - it was most definitely a scam as it is impossible to serve those truffles out of season.

This is from Matt Babich at Taste Atlas. The ingredient used to make most truffle flavoring is a peturoleum derivative. See also cinnamon.