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Okra or Gumbo (Cook in their own liquor)
cook in their own liquor and the butter for fifteen minutes, then add salt and pepper, and serve immediately.
STEWED MUSHROOMS, No. 2.
Peel the mushrooms, wash them in cold water and cut off the bottom of the stalks. Then put them into a porcelainlined kettle; to every pint of mushrooms add a tablespoonful of butter divided into four bits and rolled in flour. Let the mushrooms cook in their own liquor with the butter and flour for fifteen minutes, then add two tablespoonfuls of thick cream, salt and pepper to taste. Take from the fire, add the well-beaten yolk of one egg, and, if you use it, one tablespoonful of sherry. Serve immediately.
The page opens mid-sentence — the tail of the okra entry runs straight into Stewed Mushrooms No. 2, which is the complete recipe here. Both share the same method: vegetables cooked in nothing but their own released liquid and butter.
- The hinge: no added waterMushrooms are roughly 90 percent water and will flood the pan within a few minutes of hitting heat. Keep the lid on for the first five minutes to draw the liquor out, then uncover so it reduces rather than boils the mushrooms pale.
- Porcelain-lined kettleI.e. an enamelled or otherwise lined pan rather than bare metal; period books usually call for one where cream or pale vegetables are involved, most likely to avoid discolouration and reaction from bare iron or copper. Any non-reactive saucepan does the job; avoid bare cast iron.
- Beurre manié, not a rouxA tablespoon of butter cut in four and rolled in flour is a thickening paste stirred in cold. It binds the liquor as it melts. Use about a teaspoon of flour to the tablespoon of butter and it will thicken a pint of mushrooms lightly.
- Fifteen minutesReasonable for large open field mushrooms, which the peeling instruction suggests were what was to hand, since they need time to soften and concentrate. Modern cultivated buttons and creminis are done in eight to ten.
- The egg yolkIt goes in off the heat because it will curdle above about 180F. Slacken the yolk with a spoonful of the hot liquor first, stir it back in, and do not return the pan to the burner.
- "Thick cream"Heavy or double cream, around 36 percent fat or more. Light cream or half-and-half will thin the sauce and is more likely to break when the yolk goes in.
- PeelingOnly worth doing on large mature caps with tough, dirty skins. Skip it on cultivated mushrooms, and wipe rather than wash — the recipe wants the liquor inside the mushroom, not in the rinse water.
- YieldA pint is a volume measure here, well under a pound of mushrooms; enough for two as a side, or one on toast.
- If the mushrooms are foragedAnyone gathering their own should have the identification confirmed by someone competent; several deadly species resemble edible field mushrooms closely.
The phrase "in their own liquor" recurs in nineteenth-century American vegetable cookery, and okra and mushrooms both give up a great deal of moisture, so both are treated the same way. The finish here -- cream, an egg yolk beaten in off the fire, a spoonful of sherry "if you use it" -- is a classic French liaison. The optional sherry may reflect the common habit in American household books of marking wine as optional so a teetotal kitchen could still use the recipe, though that reading is inference rather than something this page documents. The mushrooms would most likely have been field-gathered or bought from a market gardener, commercial cultivation in the United States being a small trade before the turn of the century, and the instruction to peel the caps and trim the stalk bottoms suggests larger, older, dirtier specimens than a supermarket punnet.