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Mushroom Ragout
3 hard cooked eggs 1 pint (I cup) stock ¼ lb. mushrooms 1 teaspoonful flour oz.) butter Little chopped parsley I heaping tablespoonful (I Salt and pepper Peel the mushrooms and fry them for a minute in the hot butter in a fireproof dish, add the flour, stock, salt, and pepper. Boil for three minutes, add two of the eggs cut lengthways.
Garnish with the other egg and the parsley.
A quick sauced mushroom dish built on hard-boiled eggs, from a book written for cooking and serving in the same fireproof vessel. It comes together in under ten minutes once the eggs are cooked.
- The quantities as printedThe mushroom weight reads as 14 lb., which is clearly a damaged fraction — a quarter pound (about 115 g) suits three eggs and a cup of stock. The liquid is given as both a pint and a cup; a cup (240 ml) is the amount that will reduce properly in three minutes.
- ButterThe heaping tablespoonful equals about 1 oz, or 30 g — two level tablespoons in modern terms. That is enough to fry a quarter pound of mushrooms briskly without stewing them.
- "Fireproof dish"In this book that means a flameproof casserole or earthenware pan that goes directly on the burner, not an oven-only baking dish. A heavy skillet or small saucepan does the same job; use one wide enough that the mushrooms sit in a single layer.
- Peeling mushroomsStandard practice when field mushrooms came in with tough, grubby skins. Cultivated button or cremini mushrooms need only a wipe and a trim of the stem end.
- The one thing that mattersA minute in hot butter is not long enough to drive off mushroom water. Get the butter properly hot and the pan uncrowded, or the flour and stock will thicken into a pale, watery sauce rather than a glossy one. Giving them three or four minutes until browned improves it considerably.
- The flourOne teaspoonful to a cup of stock gives a thin coating sauce, not a gravy. Stir it into the butter and mushrooms and let it cook a moment before the stock goes in, or it will taste raw.
- EggsThe hard-cooked eggs, cut lengthways, go in only at the end, off the heat if possible — they are there to warm through, not to cook. Boiling them in the sauce turns the whites rubbery.
- YieldThe quantities suggest about two servings as a light lunch or supper dish, with toast or over rice. Season firmly; stock, mushrooms and egg all want more salt than you expect.
Ragout, from the French ragoûter, to revive the appetite, arrived in English cookery in the seventeenth century as a general term for a well-seasoned stew, and by the early twentieth century it had shrunk in domestic books to mean almost any savoury mixture bound with a little sauce. Hard-boiled eggs were a common economical protein for meatless days and luncheon dishes, and a cup of stock with a spoonful of flour was a cheap way to make them look like a course. Casserole cookery books promoted a specific convenience — the fireproof earthenware pot that could be used on the stove and carried straight to the table, saving both a pan to wash and a serving dish to warm.