8 of the World’s Most Expensive Ingredients

Yubari is to melons what Kobe is to beef. The Japanese city has become famous for a particularly tasty melon cultivar that's a cross between two cantaloupe varieties. Known as the Yubari King, this orange-fleshed melon is prized for its juicy sweetness as well as its beautiful proportions. Yubari King melons are often sold in perfectly matched pairs and are a highly ...

The white truffle is found almost exclusively in the forests of northern Italy between the months of September and December. Its unique flavor-nutty, savory, and sweet-is commonly sampled in shavings atop dishes heavy on eggs, butter, and cheese, such as fresh pasta, fonduta (a mixture of melted cheese and wine), or a decadent scrambled-egg breakfast. 

More expensive by weight than any single bird are the nests of the high-flying swiftlet species, who forge these small, cuplike structures from strands of their saliva. The swiftlet nests dissolve in broth to create the gelatinous texture of bird's nest soup, a Chinese delicacy, and are touted as valuable sources of nutrients. Nests were originally foraged from...

Genuine traditional balsamic vinegar, or balsamico tradizionale, is made from late-harvest white Trebbiano grapes that have been boiled down to form a concentrated must. The must is then placed in a series of cloth-covered barrels, allowing water to evaporate over time until the liquid transforms into a thick, dark, sweet, and complex ...

Kopi luwak, or civet coffee, is coffee that has passed through the digestive system of a nocturnal catlike animal called a civet. Wild civets, found predominantly in Asia and Africa, eat the fruit of the coffee plant as part of their natural diet and then excrete the beans in their dung. These same beans, having been fermented by the animal's stomach acids and ...

Jamón Ibérico de bellota refers to the cured leg of a pata negra pig that has been raised free-range in the old-growth oak forests of western Spain. The pigs eat a diet rich in acorns, wild mushrooms, herbs, and grasses, yielding meat that's richly flavored and low in saturated fat. Each ham is cured for a minimum of two years before reaching the market. 

Saffron is derived from a type of crocus that grows most extensively in the Mediterranean and Middle East. Its brightly hued threads are graded for quality by the Switzerland-based International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which ranks the product on a scale from 0 to 250 based on color, fragrance, and taste. 

Sturgeon caviar is the salted eggs, or roe, of the massive sturgeon fish. The world's most expensive caviar comes from the beluga species of sturgeon, but imports of this variety have been banned from the United States since 2005 in order to protect the endangered fish. Farmed osetra sturgeon caviar is currently the highest-end sustainable option on the U.S. ...