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Mushrooms, Stewed
Take a pint and a half of button mushrooms; clean them, and put them in an enamelled stewpan with three ounces of butter, first melted and allowed to brown a little. Stir them gently, and shake over a moderate fire in order that the butter may be well distributed over the mushrooms. Then add a very little powdered mace or nutmeg, with salt, white pepper, and cayenne to taste. Cover, and cook till done. They may be served on toast, or with a garnish of croutons.
A simple buttered stew that depends almost entirely on how much water you let the mushrooms give up. Two decisions — the pan and the lid — govern the result.
- A pint and a half, measured dryA pint and a half, measured by volume -- the recipe measures the mushrooms by volume, as British cookery books of the period often did. A pint and a half of whole button mushrooms is very roughly 12 oz / 340 g, enough for two or three people on toast.
- Why enamelledThe instruction is not decorative. Bare cast iron and unlined copper react with mushrooms and turn the butter and juices a dull grey-black. Enamelled cast iron, stainless steel or a well-seasoned nonstick pan all serve.
- CleaningWipe with a damp cloth or rinse briefly and dry at once. Mushrooms soaked in water release it back into the pan and the dish poaches instead of stewing.
- Brown the butter first, then commitThree ounces (85 g) is generous by design — it is the sauce. Let it foam and just colour to hazelnut before the mushrooms go in; browned butter is the flavour backbone here and cannot be added later.
- A moderate fireOn a modern hob this is medium, not medium-high. Too hot and the butter's milk solids pass from nut-brown to bitter while the mushrooms are still raw.
- Covered means steamedWith the lid on, buttons cook through in about 8–10 minutes and sit in their own liquor. If you prefer them glazed rather than swimming, lift the lid for the last few minutes and let the juices reduce to a syrup around them.
- Mace and cayenneMace is the outer sheath of the nutmeg and tastes like a lighter, more floral nutmeg — either works. The mace or nutmeg is specified as "a very little"; the cayenne is left to taste. The point is warmth behind the butter, not heat you can name.
- ServingToast should be thick and dry enough to take the butter without collapsing. Croûtons of this period were generally fried rather than baked; the recipe says nothing about how the pan juices are served.
Cassell's dictionary appeared while cultivated mushrooms were still moving from the gardener's speciality towards the shop. Through much of the nineteenth century button mushrooms were raised on beds of spent stable manure in cellars and sheds; commercial growing on any scale is generally traced to French gardeners working the quarries and caves outside Paris, whence the name champignon de Paris. English cookery of the period leaned heavily on the mushroom in preserved form — ketchup, powder, pickles — precisely because the fresh season was short and untrustworthy, so a plain stew of fresh buttons in butter reads as a small luxury rather than a staple. The insistence on an enamelled pan suggests a kitchen in which enamelled ironware had become familiar, when a cook could stew an acid or a discolouring vegetable without reaching for a tinned copper pan and worrying about the state of the lining.