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Mushrooms, Baked or Broiled
For either mode of cooking the flaps are best. We give the preference to baked mushrooms, because the whole of the juice is preserved. Flap mushrooms should be washed and dried, and the tops peeled. Put them, without the stems, into a tin baking-dish, season with pepper, salt, and a very little pounded mace, if liked. Small bits of butter laid over the top will, with the juice that flows from them, be the only sauce required. Button mushrooms are best for stewing, pickling, or potting. Broiled mushrooms should be served on a hot dish, with a small piece of butter on each, and a few drops of lemon-juice squeezed over. Time, twenty minutes to bake, ten to twelve to broil. The probable cost will be 1d. each. Sufficient, four medium-sized mushrooms to each person. (See also MUSHROOMS, GRILLED.)
A straightforward treatment of large open-cap mushrooms that still works, though the book assumes an oven temperature and a kind of mushroom that need spelling out.
- "Flaps" and "buttons"A flap is a fully opened mature cap with the gills exposed — field mushrooms in the original, portobello or large flat white mushrooms today. Buttons are the closed immature caps, which is why they are recommended for stewing and pickling, where they hold their shape.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; the entry offers no oven guidance of any kind. For twenty minutes to suit a large flat cap, work at about 400F.
- Peeling is optional nowVictorian field mushrooms came in gritty and often tough-skinned. Cultivated caps do not need peeling; scrape the gills only if you object to the dark liquor they release.
- Washing and dryingThe instruction to wash and dry is sound for foraged mushrooms. Dry them properly — a wet cap steams rather than roasts, and the flavour thins out.
- Set them gills upwardThe whole argument for baking over broiling here is that the juice is preserved. That only holds if the caps sit hollow side up so the butter melts down into them and the liquor pools rather than running off.
- MacePounded mace is the ground outer covering of nutmeg — warmer and lighter than nutmeg itself. A pinch for four caps is enough; the recipe's "very little" is not modesty.
- Broiling means under the grillBroiling means direct radiant heat -- historically a gridiron over coals rather than an overhead element; a modern overhead grill is the nearest equivalent. Ten to twelve minutes, as the recipe gives, suits a thick flat cap; smaller ones will be done sooner.
- YieldFour medium caps per person is generous by modern standards for a side dish; two large portobellos per person is nearer the mark, or one each alongside a larger meal.
- Foraged mushroomsThe recipe assumes field mushrooms gathered locally. Several dangerous species resemble the edible field mushroom closely, so pick only what has been identified with certainty by someone competent.
In late nineteenth-century Britain field mushrooms were as much a seasonal windfall as a purchase — gathered from pasture in late summer and early autumn, and cooked simply. Cultivated mushroom growing existed by this date, largely in cellars, caves and under glass, but it was small in scale and the year-round supermarket button is a twentieth-century development. The distinction the book draws between flaps and buttons is the one that mattered to a cook working from what came in: open caps had the strongest flavour and the most juice, so they were roasted or grilled whole, while the tight buttons went into pickle jars and potting pots to be kept.