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Mushrooms, Stuffed
Take some large mushrooms, skin and trim them, stew them in a little broth, but not too much. Take them out and put in the stalks and trimmings, stew them till quite tender, drain them, mince them very fine, mix them with a little butter, some pepper, salt, and a very little minced parsley. Lay this on the inside of the mushrooms, strew fine bread-crumbs over them, and bake in a Dutch oven.
A compact Victorian version of what a French kitchen would call stuffed mushrooms with duxelles — the caps cooked separately, the trimmings turned into the filling so nothing is wasted. The original assumes equipment and a mushroom trade that no longer exist.
- The Dutch oven is not a potIn Victorian English usage a Dutch oven is generally a tin reflector hood set on the hearth facing the fire, used to brown crumbed tops. As a modern substitute, a conventional oven at around 400F does the same job in 10-15 minutes; the grill or broiler for 2-3 minutes is closer to the original's fierce one-sided heat.
- Choose the right mushroom"Large mushrooms" most likely indicates open flat caps; portobello caps of 3-4 inches are the nearest modern equivalent. Button mushrooms have no cavity worth filling and fare poorly in the preliminary stewing.
- Skinning is optional nowVictorian field mushrooms often had tough, gritty cuticles. Cultivated caps do not; wipe them, twist out the stalk, and scrape out the black gills if you want a paler filling.
- Stew briefly"A little broth, but not too much" means barely enough to cover the base of the pan — a few tablespoons. Five minutes is enough for the caps; longer and they collapse and weep.
- Drive off the water in the fillingThis is the hinge. Mince the stalks and trimmings, then cook them in the butter until the pan is dry and the mixture holds together. Wet mince slides out of the caps and turns the crumbs to paste.
- Butter the crumbsDry breadcrumbs strewn over the top will scorch before they colour evenly. Toss them with a little melted butter first.
- SeasoningBroth-stewed mushrooms taste flat without generous salt. A grating of nutmeg or a spoonful of the reduced stewing liquor added back to the mince is in keeping with the period.
- YieldThe original gives no quantities; as a guide, eight to twelve large caps will serve about four as a savoury or first course, or two as a supper dish on toast.
Stuffed mushrooms of this kind belong to the run of small "savouries" and vegetable entrees that filled out late-Victorian dinners between the roast and the sweet, and the method -- chopping the stalks and trimmings fine with butter and herbs -- is close to the duxelles of French professional kitchens, a preparation traditionally associated with the household of the seventeenth-century Marquis d'Uxelles and long since absorbed into English cookery books. What makes the recipe practicable is the mushroom trade: forced mushroom beds under glass, and the disused quarries around Paris, meant that by the later nineteenth century cooks could buy large cultivated caps rather than gamble on foraged ones. Cassell's, sold in parts to middle-class households, is full of these thrifty second uses for the parts a modern cook might throw away -- here the stalks and trimmings become the filling.