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Mushrooms, Dry
Mushrooms prepared in this way will be found useful when fresh ones are not to be had. They are prepared precisely like powdered mushrooms (see MUSHROOMS, POWDERED), but button mushrooms and just-opened ones do best. Do not draw their juice, but place them at once in a slow oven on white thick paper. They will shrink, and lose their round appearance, but if carefully done, and not burnt, they will be found excellent for hashes, etc. They need only be put into the gravy when cold, and warmed up, to swell to nearly their original size. Keep them in brown-paper bags hung near the fire.
A method rather than a dish: whole mushrooms dried whole so they can be swollen back in gravy. The whole thing turns on getting them bone-dry without cooking them.
- "A slow oven"The book gives no temperature; in a Victorian range a slow oven was the coolest setting, often the oven left after baking, and is usually glossed somewhere around 200-300F. For drying, modern practice is lower: 125-140F with the door propped, or a dehydrator. Much above this they begin to cook, sweat and stew rather than dry.
- The hinge: dry them brittle"Do not draw their juice" sets this apart from the powdered version, where the liquid is drawn off first. Dry until a piece snaps rather than bends. Anything left leathery holds enough moisture to mould in storage, which is the likeliest failure here.
- Choose the right mushroomsButtons and just-opened caps, as stated, because thin flesh and closed gills dry evenly. Large flat field mushrooms collapse into black leather and are better made into powder or ketchup.
- White thick paperIt keeps the caps off the metal and absorbs some moisture, though it blocks air from below. Parchment on a wire rack, or the caps laid directly on the rack so air reaches both sides, will dry them faster.
- StorageBrown-paper bags near the fire kept them dry in a damp house, but they also invite insects and dust. Cool them completely, then store airtight in glass in the dark, and check after a week for any sign of condensation.
- Rehydrating"put them into the gravy when cold, and warmed up" is sound: time in warm liquid restores much of the shape. They will never be quite as plump as fresh. If you soak them separately, the liquid carries flavour and is worth straining and using.
- YieldRoughly 1 lb of fresh mushrooms gives about 1 1/2 oz dried, enough to season several dishes.
Cassell's, compiled for late-Victorian middle-class households, treats mushrooms as something that arrives in a glut and must be captured: the book carries ketchup, powder, pickles and this drying method within a few pages of each other. Cultivated mushrooms existed, grown in beds and mushroom houses partly to extend the season, but the wild autumn field mushroom was the usual source, so the aim is to have savoury depth on hand in February. The instruction to hang the bags near the fire is a reminder of how damp an unheated larder was, and of how much preserving in this period depended on the kitchen range as a low, constant, unmeasured heat source rather than on a thermometer. Dried mushroom powder was also, in effect, a homemade equivalent of the commercial meat extracts and bottled sauces then flooding the market.