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Broiled Mushrooms
Peel the large mushrooms, cut off the stalks and dip them in melted butter. Dust them lightly with salt and pepper and let stand in a cool place thirty minutes. Then place them on a broiler top side down; close the broiler
A fragment of a recipe — the text breaks off mid-instruction — but the method is complete enough to follow, and it is still the best way to cook a large flat mushroom.
- "Broiler" means a hinged wire gridIn this period a broiler was a two-sided wire basket set over coals in a range, which is why the recipe says to "close" it. Under a modern overhead broiler, or on a grill, cook the caps without turning: gills up, 4 to 6 inches from the element, 6 to 10 minutes until the juices pool in the cup.
- "Top side down" means gills upThe rounded cap goes against the grid so the melted butter and mushroom liquor collect in the hollow instead of dripping into the fire. Under a modern overhead element the gills then also face the heat; over coals they do not.
- Skip the peelingPeeling was routine in older books, whether for grit, bruising or appearance. Cultivated portobellos and large creminis need only a wipe with a damp cloth; the skin helps hold the cap together.
- Keep the stalksThe recipe gives no reason for cutting them off. Trim the stem flush rather than gouging it out, and chop the trimmings for a duxelles or stock instead of discarding them.
- The thirty-minute restSalted mushrooms draw out water, and the half hour lets that liquid come to the surface and mix with the butter, so the caps go to the fire already moistened.
- Butter quantityThe original gives none. Allow about 1 tablespoon melted butter per large cap, brushed over both sides; more simply runs off.
- Yield and servingTwo to three large caps per person as a vegetable course. Buttered toast under them catches the juices; they also go alongside a grilled steak or chop.
- Wild mushroomsBooks of this date assume the reader knows a field mushroom on sight. Do not extend the method to foraged specimens unless they have been identified with certainty.
Broiling was the treatment reserved for mushrooms good enough to stand alone — large, flat, fully opened caps, cooked with nothing but butter, salt and pepper. Commercial growing in caves, cellars and purpose-built houses expanded through the late nineteenth century, and mushrooms shifted over a generation or two from a seasonal field-gathered luxury to something a city cook could buy, while many period recipes stretch them into sauces, ketchups and forcemeats. A vegetable manual devoting a recipe to plain broiled caps is signalling that the ingredient has arrived. With the gills-up method the cap becomes its own small dish, and the concentrated liquor that gathers in it is the reason the technique survives on grills and under broilers today.