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Testing and Cooking Mushrooms

Peel off the outer skin, break out the stem, and set the cap, top down, on a hot stove. In the spot where the stem formerly stood put a little salt, and, if desired, a small bit of butter. Scatter some salt over the gills. When the butter or salt melts, the cooking is done; and as soon as it is cool enough the fungus should be eaten, carefully saving the juice. Some fungi that do not seem particularly delicious when thus cooked, will, when slowly stewed with a little butter, and flour dredged in, with salt and pepper, make most delicious stews. Agaricus campestris is the one generally raised, but all the mushrooms, cantharellus, marisimus, boletus, indeed all of the edible fungi named, will stew together, and form a dish that, alone or as an entrée, cannot be surpassed in delicacy of flavor and gastronomic satisfaction.

In testing new fungi, one eats a little of the cap with common salt to ascertain whether it tastes good, and whether it affects the fauces of the throat disagreeably; when a burning or stinging sensation accompanies or follows the swallowing, eat no more but take a copious dose of common salt, which generally neutralizes the poison. Some species, unpleasant or slightly injurious when raw, lose their harsh qualities in cooking; but as there are so many that are delicious, it is well to give up the doubtful kinds.

IV. Pickles, Catsup and Condiments.

PICKLES are any vegetables, fruits or other substance preserved in vinegar. Sweet pickles are preserved with vinegar, sugar and spices. Catsups are, in some sense, liquid pickles. The juices of the vegetables and vinegar compose the catsup with the addition of spices. A condiment is something to give zest to dishes, or to add to, or bring out flavor. Leaves are useful in flavoring; those of herbs are well known; many common varieties should be better known. Peach leaves and those of the laurel contain the virtue of bitter almonds, itself a form of prussic acid, a deadly poison when concentrated, but harmless in small quantities. V. Leaves for Flavoring.

ONE of the most useful and harmless of all leaves for flavoring is that of the common syringa. When cucumbers are scarce these are a perfect substitute in salads or anything in which that flavor is desired. The taste is not only like that of cucumbers, but identical-a curious instance of the correlation of flavors in widely different families. Again, the young leaves of cucumbers have a striking likeness, in the way of flavor, to that of fruit. The same may be affirmed of carrot tops, which are as like carrots in taste as may be. In most gardens there is a waste of celery flavor in the sacrifice of the outside leaves and their partially blanched footstalks. Blanched celery is cut up into soup, when the outside leaves would flavor it equally well or better. The young leaves of gooseberries added to bottled fruit give a fresher flavor and greener color to pies and tarts. The leaves of the flowering currant give a sort of intermediate flavor between that of black currants and red. Orange, citron and lemon leaves impart a flavoring equal to that of the fruit and rind combined, and somewhat different from both. A few leaves added to pies, or boiled in the milk used to bake with rice, or formed into crusts or paste, impart an excellent flavor. In fact, leaves are not half so much used for seasoning purposes as they might be. VI. Sour Pickles-Cucumbers.

As the cucumbers are gathered, pack them down in any suitable vessel with salt enough to make a strong brine, for which the cucumbers will usually furnish moisture enough; keep them under by placing over them a follower, fitting the inside of the barrel and weighted sufficiently to press firmly upon them. They may remain thus until wanted for the table. Then soak them in water until fresh, changing it as often as necessary. Pack them in jars, and pour over them scalding vinegar, seasoned to suit the taste with cloves and other spices, but if it is desired to have them of the fashionable and deleterious green color, they should be just scalded in a brass kettle, with water and a little alum to harden them. The verdigris which is formed during the act of scalding imparts the fashionable tint and the process is continued until the desired green color is reached; after which, pack as before directed, with hot vinegar. If this greening process is carried too far, the pickles become absolutely poisonoussometimes fatally so. Sensible persons generally take their pickled cucumbers without this poison, and if not exposed to the light, ungreened pickles do not fade much. Cucumbers for pickles should never exceed over three inches in length. The smaller they are the better.