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Mushroom Pie
Butter a pie-dish, put a layer of mushrooms at the bottom, sprinkle some pepper and salt and a few pieces of butter over; then a layer of sliced boiled potatoes. Continue to put mushrooms and potatoes in alternate layers until the dish is heaped up, then cover with a short crust, decorate nicely with leaves, etc., and bake in a moderate oven for three-quarters of an hour.
A layered vegetable pie of the plainest sort, with no sauce and no bottom crust — the mushrooms are expected to make their own gravy. A few notes on how to keep that from turning into a puddle.
- Moderate ovenRead this as 350F (175C). Three-quarters of an hour at that heat cooks the mushrooms through and colours a shortcrust lid; if the pastry is pale at the end, give it five minutes at 425F.
- The mushrooms are the hingeField mushrooms give off a great deal of liquid, and stacked raw in a deep dish they will flood the pie. Either use them small and whole rather than sliced, or dry-fry them briefly in a hot pan first and let the released juice cook away before layering.
- What kind of mushroomThe recipe says only "mushrooms," and in this period that most likely meant the field mushroom (Agaricus campestris), stronger and darker-fleshed than the standard supermarket button. Chestnut or portobello mushrooms come closest in flavour; plain white buttons will need help from a little stock or a splash of cream between the layers.
- Boiled potatoesBoil them the day before if you can, and only until just tender — slices from a freshly boiled hot potato collapse into mash under the weight of the layers. Cut them about a quarter-inch thick.
- Short crustA lid only; there is no lining pastry. Roughly 8 oz flour to 4 oz fat makes enough for a standard 9-inch pie dish. "Decorate nicely with leaves" means pastry trimmings cut into leaf shapes and stuck on with beaten egg or milk.
- Heaped upThe dish is deliberately overfilled so the contents support the crust as they settle. A pie funnel or an upturned eggcup in the centre does the same job and lets steam out.
- YieldA 9-inch dish, about 1 1/2 lb mushrooms and 1 lb potatoes, serves four as a main course with a green vegetable.
Cassell's belongs to a period when mushrooms were still largely a gathered food in Britain: commercial cultivation was expanding through the later nineteenth century, but the autumn field mushroom picked from pasture was still a common source, and cookery books of the era often carry advice on telling the edible ones from the rest. That seasonal abundance may help explain a recipe like this one — no sauce, no meat, no stock, nothing but mushrooms, potatoes, butter and pepper, using a large quantity of something briefly plentiful.