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Cottager's Pie
Cut fresh mushrooms in small pieces, sprinkle them with salt and pepper. Cut thin slices of nice bacon in small pieces, put them in the bottom of a rather shallow baking-dish; on these put a layer of the mushrooms, and over these a layer of finely mashed and well-seasoned potatoes. Fill the dish in this way with a layer of mashed potatoes on top. Put bits of butter on top, cover, and bake half an hour in a moderately hot oven. When nearly done remove the cover and brown the top.
This makes a good dish to serve at lunch or for an informal supper, where no meat is to be served, or with cold meat, followed by a salad and dessert and coffee. A hot vegetable, like stewed tomatoes or creamed peas, may accompany it.
A layered bake of bacon, raw mushrooms and mashed potato, filed under Vegetables despite the bacon. It works, but the two things that decide whether it is good are moisture control and getting the bacon actually cooked.
- Oven temperature"Moderately hot" in books of this period is 375-400F. At 350F the bacon on the bottom will not render properly in half an hour.
- The bacon layerModern supermarket bacon is usually wet-cured, unlike the "nice bacon" intended here. Cut it into small pieces as directed but render it briefly in a pan first and spread it with a spoonful of its fat; a covered dish will otherwise steam it pale and flabby.
- Mushroom liquidRaw mushrooms layered under mashed potato release a great deal of water with nowhere to go, and the bottom turns to broth. Either sauté them for a few minutes to drive off the moisture, or salt them, let them stand fifteen minutes and drain before layering.
- Mashed potato consistencyThe mash should be stiffer than you would serve on its own — milk and butter enough to season, no more. A loose mash slumps into the mushrooms instead of holding as a layer.
- Covered, then uncoveredThe cover traps steam so the mushrooms cook through; the last ten minutes uncovered dries and colours the top. If the surface still looks pallid, a minute or two under the broiler finishes it.
- QuantitiesThe original gives none. For a shallow 8-inch dish, figure about 1 lb mushrooms, 4-6 oz bacon and 2 lb potatoes mashed; that serves four as a light main course.
- "Where no meat is to be served"The bacon is evidently treated here as seasoning rather than as meat. For a genuinely meatless version, brown the mushrooms in butter with a little onion and thyme to replace the savour the bacon supplied.
The name borrows from cottage pie, the English dish of minced meat under a mashed potato crust, a name recorded from the late eighteenth century, by which time the potato was cheap enough to serve as a lid. This version keeps the crust and drops the joint, which fits the book's own serving note: a dish for lunch or an informal supper "where no meat is to be served," or to be served with cold meat. Mushrooms in the meat's place may say something about the period's kitchen economics \— mushroom cultivation was expanding in American and British markets around the turn of the twentieth century, and mushrooms were prized for a savoury depth that let a cook build a substantial dish without a butcher's bill. The suggested accompaniments, stewed tomatoes or creamed peas followed by salad, dessert and coffee, sketch the shape of a modest middle-class supper as clearly as the recipe itself does.