Mushrooms, Stewed
INGREDIENTS for dish for 4 or 5 persons. -1 pint of mushroom buttons, 3 oz. of fresh butter, white pepper and salt to taste, lemon-juice, 1 teaspoonful of flour, cream or milk, 1/4 teaspoonful of grated nutmeg. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 3d.
Cut off the ends of the stalks and pare neatly a pint of mushroom-buttons; put them into a basin of water, with a little lemon-juice, as they are done. When all are prepared, take them from the water with the hands, to avoid the sediment; and put them into a stewpan with the fresh butter, white pepper, salt and the juice of 1/2 lemon cover the pan closely and let the mushrooms stew gently from 20 to 25 minutes; then thicken the butter with the above proportion of flour, add gradually sufficient cream, or cream and milk, to make the sauce of a proper consistency and put in the grated nutmeg. If the mushrooms are not perfectly tender, stew them for 5 minutes longer, remove every particle of butter which may be floating on the top and serve.
TIME.- hour.
MUSTARD, TARTAR. and peel the tops; put them into a stewpan with the gravy and simmer them gently from 20 minutes to 1/2 hour. Add the nutmeg and a seasoning of cayenne and salt and serve very hot.
TIME.-20 minutes to 1/2 hour.
SEASONABLE. - Meadow mushrooms in September and October.
A gentle butter stew of small button mushrooms, finished with flour and cream. It is quick work once the mushrooms are trimmed, and the seasoning is deliberately restrained so the mushroom flavour carries the dish.
- The hinge: keep the pan coveredThe mushrooms are meant to cook in their own liquor with the butter, not to fry or reduce dry. A tight lid and low heat give you the pale, juicy result the recipe intends; lift it and you will need to add liquid to compensate.
- A pint of mushroom buttonsThis is a volume measure, somewhere in the region of 8 to 12 oz (250-350 g) of small closed-cap mushrooms. Buy the smallest whole buttons you can find so they cook evenly in the time given.
- Paring and the lemon waterThe recipe directs you to trim the stalk ends and pare the caps, a sensible step for wild-gathered mushrooms that came in gritty or bruised. Cultivated buttons need only a wipe and the stalk ends trimmed. The lemon water is there to stop browning, and still works for that if you are preparing them ahead.
- TimingTwenty to twenty-five minutes covered is longer than modern practice but appropriate here: it is a slow braise, not a sear, and older field mushrooms were tougher. Cultivated buttons will be tender in 10 to 12 minutes, so check early and go by texture.
- ThickeningSprinkle the teaspoon of flour over the buttery liquid and stir it in, cook a minute to lose the raw taste, then add cream or cream and milk a little at a time. Roughly 4-6 tablespoons brings it to a coating sauce; add slowly rather than all at once.
- Skimming the butterThree ounces of butter to this quantity of mushrooms will separate out. Spooning the surface fat off before serving, as instructed, is what keeps the sauce from tasting greasy.
- Nutmeg and white pepperGrate the nutmeg fresh. White pepper is used so the pale sauce stays unspeckled, but black pepper does no harm to the flavour.
- Yield and servingAs written it serves four to five as a side or savoury. Serve hot on toast, or alongside roast or grilled meat, and dress the sauce with a squeeze of lemon at the last moment if it tastes flat.
Stewed mushrooms of this kind belonged to a period when a good part of the British mushroom supply was still gathered wild, and the note that meadow mushrooms are seasonable in September and October reflects that, though cultivation in beds and mushroom houses was already practised. Because gathered field mushrooms varied in age, size and grit, peeling and trimming and then stewing them long and covered in butter suited tough specimens and produced the pale creamy sauce favoured for a dish sent to table as a vegetable or a savoury course. The costing in shillings and pence is characteristic of the book's method: entries carried an average cost, as this one does at 1s. 3d.