Important: Safety Warning
This page gives advice for salvaging or disguising food that has begun to spoil. Spoiled food can carry dangerous bacteria and toxins that no washing, soaking, or seasoning removes; it should be discarded.
In addition, this page states that certain wild plants are safe to eat. Its identifications and edibility claims are more than a century old and in some cases simply wrong, and deadly look-alikes exist for many edible species. Never eat a wild plant on the strength of this text.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
Mullet
See Red and Grey.
MUSHROOMS require a volume to themselves. It is not possible here to give them more than a few lines. Their varieties are infinite; and there is yearly an immense waste of them, through our inability to discern between the edible and the poisonous ones. Professor Schiff has demonstrated that the non-edible mushrooms have a common poison, muscarina, and that its effects are counteracted either by atropine or daturine. Italian apothecaries now keep these alkaloids in the rural districts where the consumption of the non-edible fungi is apt to occur. Those mushrooms which are edible are full of nourishment and Mussels of the most exquisite flavour. I have seen people with their eyes shut eat mushrooms-a variety which the French call ceps and heard them declare that they were eating flesh. Of the enormous value of the mushroom in sauces and ragouts the reader has seen ample proof in the course of these pages. For the treatment of mushrooms by themselves there are two leading receipts.
Stewed Mushrooms. These are the Mushrooms à l'olivier invented by La Varenne, and since developed into the Duxelles. See Duxelles; and see also Truffes à l'Italienne, which is but another form of the same receipt with the substitution of truffles for mushrooms.
Grilled Mushrooms. - Peppered, salted, buttered and grilled. When, in addition to this, they are served with a sauce of oil or melted butter, to which parsley, young onions and garlic (all chopped) are added, together with the juice of a lemon, they are called Mushrooms à la Bordelaise.
MUSSELS are the oysters of the poor, said Grimod de la Reynière, and they ought to be favoured also by the rich, for there is scarcely a shell-fish which surpasses them in flavour. Especially in these days, when oysters are dear, mussels might occasionally take their place in sauces and stews. The French are wise, for they still hold the mussel in regard-it is one of the chief attractions of that noble ragout, the Normandy Matelote. In England-be it said with shame-the mussel is chiefly used for bait; it is rarely to be seen at any good English table-it is only in houses where the French style of cookery reigns that it is to be had. People are afraid of mussels because once or twice they have proved to be hurtful. So have mushrooms; so have melons: but still mushrooms and melons are eaten. Mussel-poisoning must be extremely rare-or we should know more about it. Our science is not so Mustard backward that if, among the myriads of mussels which the French consume, the cases of poisoning were numerous, we should not be able to detect the cause. If care is taken not to eat the mussels in those months which have no letter R in their names there is little danger.
Mussel Sauce.-Proceed as for oyster sauce. Let there be no lack of mussels, and remove the hard parts.