Home › Vegetables › Escalloped Mushrooms
Escalloped Mushrooms
Prepare either small button mushrooms, or if large ones slice them and cook in a covered saucepan with water enough to barely cover; a little vinegar added to the water will hasten the cooking. When they have simmered until tender, add to a pint of mushrooms 1 pint of milk and bring to a boil. Season well with salt and pepper. Butter a baking-dish, and put a layer of cracker crumbs on the bottom; put in a layer of the mushrooms, with bits of butter scattered over, then another layer of crumbs and mushroom, finishing with crumbs on the top. Pour over all the liquor and milk in which the mushrooms were cooked, put bits of butter on the top and dust with salt and pepper, and bake until the top is well browned. Serve in the same dish.
Parisienne potatoes fried a golden brown may accompany the dish. Heap the balls in a mound on a pretty platter and garnish with sprigs of parsley.
A straightforward layered gratin from the era when mushrooms were still a semi-luxury. The original gives no oven setting and no yield, so both need filling in.
- Oven and timingBake at 375F for about 25 to 30 minutes, until the top is well browned and the milk is bubbling at the edges. Everything in the dish is already cooked, so you are only browning and thickening.
- Don't overcook the mushrooms firstButton mushrooms need only 5 to 8 minutes of simmering to go tender; sliced large ones less. The original "simmered until tender" invited much longer, and mushroom pieces that boil for twenty minutes collapse into grey threads in the finished dish.
- The vinegarA teaspoon or two in the simmering water is enough. The original claims only that it hastens the cooking; acid also helps keep mushrooms pale, though the recipe does not say so. At that quantity the flavour effect is negligible.
- A pint of mushroomsThis is a volume measure of prepared mushrooms, roughly 8 to 10 oz whole button mushrooms by weight, or about 6 oz sliced. Matching it with a full pint of milk gives a very loose, soupy result by modern taste, so consider reducing the milk to a cup and a half, or simmering the mushroom liquor down before combining.
- Cracker crumbsPlain soda crackers or water biscuits, crushed coarse, not fine dust. Crackers vary a good deal in salt, so taste the crumbs before you season the dish.
- Keep the bottom layer thinThe crumbs on the base will soak up most of the liquid and turn to paste; a single sparse layer is enough, with the bulk of the crumbs reserved for the top where they can brown.
- Parisienne potatoesSmall balls cut from raw potato with a melon baller, then fried or roasted. Cut them from large starchy potatoes and dry them well before they go into the fat.
- YieldAs written this fills a shallow 8-inch dish and serves four as a side, or two as a light supper dish.