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Mushrooms Cooked Under Glass Bells
Saute 1/2 pound of peeled mushroom caps in 3 tablespoons Crisco, season with salt and paprika, add 1 cup of cream, cover and let simmer until reduced a little. Arrange mushrooms on round of bread in mushroom dish, pour liquid over, cover with glass bell and bake 20 minutes in moderate oven. Send to table without removing glass, which confines delicate flavor and aroma of mushrooms.
A hotel-style "under glass" service adapted for the home cook, and one of the many recipes in this book built around a then-new shortening. Almost everything here translates directly; the vessel is the only real obstacle.
- The glass bellThis is a cloche — a dome set over the food on its own dish so the steam and aroma stay trapped until it reaches the table. Antique bells were blown glass and not made for a 350F oven; a modern tempered or borosilicate dome, or an ovenproof gratin dish with a glass lid, does the same job. Never move any glass dome straight from cold to a hot oven, or from oven to a wet counter.
- CriscoThe book was written to promote it, and 3 tablespoons of any neutral fat will do. Butter is better here — it browns the mushrooms and flatters the cream.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350-375F. The dish is already cooked at this stage; the oven is only holding and marrying it under the dome.
- Peeled mushroom capsPeeling was standard when mushrooms arrived dirty and the skins were tough. With cultivated white or cremini caps, wipe them and trim the stem flush. Discard stems or save for stock.
- The creamUse heavy cream, not light or half-and-half — it needs to reduce without breaking. Simmer uncovered rather than covered if you want it to thicken in any reasonable time; "reduced a little" means it coats the mushrooms and no more.
- The bread roundCut it to fit the dish and toast or fry it in butter first. Untoasted bread under 20 minutes of hot cream turns to paste.
- TimingTwenty minutes is generous for mushrooms already sauteed and simmered. Ten to twelve minutes is enough to heat through and set the cream; longer and the caps shrink and squeak.
- YieldHalf a pound of caps and a cup of cream serves two as a first course, or one as a savory supper.
Cooking "under glass" — sous cloche — was a restaurant flourish that spread through American hotel and club dining rooms in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most often applied to squab, sweetbreads or mushrooms on toast. The point was theatrical as much as culinary: the domed dish arrived clouded with condensation and was lifted at the table so the aroma reached the diner rather than the kitchen, which is exactly the claim made in the last line here. Specialised "mushroom dishes" with matching bells were sold for the purpose, and their disappearance from cupboards is most of the reason the technique reads as exotic now. The appearance of Crisco in place of butter dates the recipe firmly: this book belongs to the wave of promotional cookbooks issued after hydrogenated vegetable shortening reached the American market in the 1910s, in which every dish, sweet or savory, found a use for it.