Important: Safety Warning
This page describes home-canning methods from before the causes of botulism were understood. Canning low-acid foods without a pressure canner, as described here, can allow the growth of Clostridium botulinum, whose toxin is among the deadliest known. Follow current USDA home-canning guidelines instead.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Mushrooms, to Preserve
INGREDIENTS---To each quart of mushrooms, allow 3 oz. of butter, pepper and salt to taste, the juice of 1 lemon, clarified butter.
MUSHROOMS, STEWED.
Peel the mushrooms, put them into cold water, with a little lemon-juice; take them out and dry them very carefully in a cloth.
Put the butter into a stewpan capable of holding the mushrooms; when it is melted, add the mushrooms, lemon-juice and a seasoning of pepper and salt; draw them down over a slow fire, and let them remain until their liquor is boiled away and they have become quite dry, but be careful in not allowing them to stick to the bottom of the stewpan. When done, put them into pots and pour over the top clarified butter. If wanted for immediate use, they will keep good a few days without being covered over. To re-warm them, put the mushrooms into a stewpan, strain the butter from them and they will be ready for use.
SEASONABLE. - Meadow mushrooms in September and October; cultivated mushrooms may be had at any time.
The text as printed is garbled — the opening line is a fragment of the preceding entry, and the heading "Mushrooms, Stewed" has drifted into the middle. What follows the ingredient list is the whole method. Read as a way of storing mushrooms, it belongs to a world before refrigeration and cannot be followed safely now.
- Why the preserving step failsMushrooms are low in acid, and sealing them under a layer of clarified butter creates exactly the oxygen-free environment in which Clostridium botulinum spores germinate and produce toxin. Nothing in the method reaches a spore-killing temperature, and there is no acid, salt level or refrigeration specified. Potted low-acid vegetables held at room temperature are one of the classic botulism vehicles; if you want preserved mushrooms, use a current tested recipe.
- "Keep good a few days without being covered"This assumed a cold larder and daily marketing. A cooked mushroom held for days at kitchen temperature is a growth medium, and the surface butter only makes the interior more anaerobic.
- A quart of mushroomsA quart of whole button mushrooms is roughly 10-14 oz depending on how they pack, so the ratio is somewhere near 3 oz butter to three-quarters of a pound of mushrooms - very rich by modern habit, because the butter is doing the sealing work as well as the cooking.
- Stewpan, not casseroleA Victorian stewpan is a heavy lidded saucepan used on the hob. "Draw them down over a slow fire" means cook gently at the edge of the range until the mushrooms collapse and give up their liquor — low heat, uncovered enough for the moisture to escape.
- PeelingBeeton's cooks peeled mushrooms because field specimens came in gritty and often with tough cuticles. Cultivated mushrooms today need only a wipe; peeling throws away flavour.
- Clarified butterButter with the milk solids and water removed, so it sets solid and does not turn. It was the standard Victorian sealing fat for potted meat, fish and mushrooms, and its keeping quality was genuinely better than fresh butter — which is precisely why the method was trusted longer than it deserved.
- Lemon waterThe cold water with lemon juice is an anti-browning bath. It works, but soaking mushrooms waterlogs them; a brief dip and thorough drying in a cloth, as instructed, is the point.
- SeasonableMeadow mushrooms in September and October means Agaricus campestris, gathered wild. Never gather on the strength of a Victorian description; several dangerous species pass for field mushrooms at a glance.
Potting under a cap of clarified butter was the standard English way of holding a cooked delicacy for a few weeks, applied to shrimps, salmon, beef, game and — as here — mushrooms, and it appears throughout Beeton's alphabet because a cold larder, rather than any means of chilling, was what a kitchen of the 1860s had to work with. The "Seasonable" note is the more revealing line: meadow mushrooms had to be gathered in a narrow autumn window, while "cultivated mushrooms may be had at any time" reflects an expansion rather than a novelty in Beeton's century, as market gardeners around London and Paris cropped Agaricus on beds of spent stable manure in cellars, caves and disused quarries — a practice already established well before 1800. Year-round mushrooms were still a comparative luxury, which is why a preserving recipe was worth printing at all; once the crop became cheap and constant, potting mushrooms faded as a household skill, while related preparations such as the still-made potted shrimp carried on.