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Broiled Mushrooms
Select agarics or any good-sized mushrooms; wash and remove the scales. Dry them on a clean towel, put them in a buttered double broiler, and broil for a few minutes on both sides.
Have ready slices of freshly made, well-buttered toast. Place the mushrooms on the toast, sprinkle with salt and pepper, put bits of butter on each, stand in the oven just long enough to melt the butter, and serve. A little crisp broiled bacon gives a good flavor. Put this crisped bacon on the slices of toast, and put the mushrooms on the top.
A short, plain preparation that lives or dies on driving moisture out of the mushrooms before they hit the toast. Everything else is butter, salt and timing.
- "Agarics"In older cookery writing a loose term for gilled mushrooms, and commonly the field mushroom, Agaricus campestris, gathered in pasture. The supermarket portobello is the same genus and can stand in for it; roughly four large caps make two servings.
- Wild mushroomsIf you are picking rather than buying, identify to species with a reliable local key before cooking. Several pasture mushrooms resemble edible agarics closely enough that the resemblance is the whole problem.
- "Remove the scales"Most likely the loose scaly skin of the cap, which period books often had the cook peel away. With cultivated caps you can skip it: wipe them, pull the stem, and scrape the gills only if you object to dark juices staining the toast.
- WashingThe recipe washes and then dries on a towel, which is the right order. Wet mushrooms steam instead of browning, so dry them thoroughly and give them a minute in the pan or broiler to release and cook off their own liquid.
- Double broilerA hinged wire basket that clamped the food between two grids so it could be flipped whole over coals. A modern equivalent is a grill basket, a ridged pan, or simply the oven broiler with the caps turned once. Allow three to four minutes a side, gill-side up first.
- "Stand in the oven"Only to melt the butter, so a moderate oven for a minute or two, or the residual heat of the turned-off broiler; the recipe specifies no temperature. Longer and the toast dries to a cracker.
- Toast and baconButter the toast while hot so it soaks in, and assemble at the last moment. The bacon variation wants it broiled crisp and drained, laid down first so it stays crisp under the mushroom juices.
- ServingTwo slices of toast per person as a light supper or breakfast dish, one as a savoury course. It does not hold; serve straight from the oven.