Home › The Principles of Cookery › Mushrooms, Forcemeat Of
Mushrooms, Forcemeat Of
Put a lump of butter into a stewpan, in which stew some button mushrooms, or some small newly-opened ones, previously peeled, and with part of the stalk taken off. Season with cayenne, a little powdered mace, and salt. In about six or seven minutes, when they have been well tossed in the pan, put them on a dish set sloping to drain off the butter, and when cold, have ready a quarter of a pound of fine bread-crumbs; mix these with a quarter of a pound of the mushrooms finely minced; add a very little mace and nutmeg, a tea-spoonful of grated lemon-peel, and more salt or cayenne, if necessary, but the flavour of the mushrooms should predominate, and too much seasoning would destroy it. Moisten with some of the butter in which they were stewed, and break up small an ounce and a half of fresh butter. Bind the mixture with the yolks of two eggs, pound all in a mortar, and make into balls, to be used for soup, or fried and served with roast fowls, or round minced veal. Boiled fowls should have some of the forcemeat put inside.
MUSHROOMS, FORCEMEAT OF (another way). (See FORCEMEAT OF MUSHROOMS.)
A Victorian forcemeat: stewed mushrooms bound with crumbs, butter and egg yolk, rolled into balls to garnish soup or roast poultry. The instruction that matters most is the draining step — the mixture must be cold and free of loose butter before the yolks go in, or the balls will slump in the pan.
- Mushrooms and quantityA quarter pound (about 4 oz / 115 g) refers to the stewed mushrooms after cooking, so you will need noticeably more raw buttons or small caps, since they shed a good deal of water in the pan; the recipe itself gives no raw weight. Modern cultivated mushrooms do not need peeling; wipe them and trim the stalk end.
- BreadcrumbsA quarter pound of "fine bread-crumbs" most likely means crumbs grated from stale white bread, roughly 2 to 2½ cups loosely packed. Dried commercial crumbs are far denser and drier; if you use them, take about 1 cup and expect a stiffer paste needing more butter.
- MacePowdered mace is the outer coat of nutmeg and is still sold ground, though often only in larger spice shops. Use a scant pinch in the stewing and another in the mixture — with the nutmeg as well it is easy to overwhelm the mushrooms, which the recipe rightly warns against.
- The stewing timeSix or seven minutes of tossing in butter is right for small whole mushrooms: long enough to drive off water and concentrate flavour, short enough that they keep some bite. Keep the heat brisk rather than gentle so they colour instead of stewing pale.
- Instead of a mortarA food processor does the pounding in a few short pulses. Stop while there is still visible texture; run it to a smooth paste and the balls turn gluey.
- Butter measureAn ounce and a half of fresh butter is about 3 tablespoons, worked in cold and broken small so it stays in flecks. Add the reserved stewing butter a spoonful at a time — you want a mixture that just holds a shape when squeezed.
- Cooking the ballsShape them walnut-sized. Fried, they want deep fat at 350-360F for 2-3 minutes until browned; dropped into soup, give them 5-6 minutes at a bare simmer and do not stir hard or they break up. Chilling the shaped balls for 30 minutes first makes both methods more reliable.
- YieldAs written this makes roughly 16-20 walnut-sized balls, enough to garnish soup for six or to accompany two roast fowls.
- Stuffing a boiled fowlIf you put the forcemeat inside a bird, pack it loosely and take the stuffing to 165F along with the thigh meat — it contains raw yolk and is denser than the flesh around it.
Forcemeat — from the French farce, by way of an English ear that heard "force" — was the workhorse of nineteenth-century garnishing: a pounded, bound mixture rolled into balls or quenelles and used to give soups and roast joints something to sit beside. Cassell's treats it as a whole category, which is why this entry ends by cross-referencing another version under a different heading; the dictionary format meant the same preparation could be indexed by its main ingredient or by its type. A mushroom forcemeat rather than the usual veal or bacon one belongs to a genteel Victorian taste for meatless garnishes with concentrated savour, built on the same instinct that produced mushroom ketchup and mushroom powder in the same books.