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Broiled Mushrooms
Wash the mushrooms; remove the stems and peel the caps. Place them in a broiler and broil for five minutes, with the cap side down during the first half of broiling. Serve on circular pieces of buttered toast, sprinkling with salt and pepper and putting a small piece of butter on each cap.
A four-line recipe that depends entirely on the mushrooms being large, flat and fresh. A few of its instructions reflect the mushrooms of a century ago rather than what is on sale now.
- "A broiler" means the rack"A broiler" -- In this period the word could mean a hinged wire gridiron used over coals, or the broiling compartment of a gas range. Use an oven broiler with the rack set 3-4 inches from the element, preheated, or a stovetop grill pan.
- Five minutes is for large flat capsFive minutes suits large flat caps -- Five minutes suits open field-type caps of around 3 inches or more; the recipe itself specifies no size. Small closed button mushrooms will be done in half the time and are better sauteed; thick portobellos want 8-10 minutes total.
- Skip the peelingPeeling the cap was standard when mushrooms arrived field-picked, dirty and with tough skins. Cultivated caps today need no peeling; the skin holds them together under high heat.
- Do not wash them wetDo not soak them -- Mushrooms are largely water already, and a long soak leaves them wet enough to steam rather than brown. Wipe with a damp cloth or rinse briefly and pat dry.
- Butter before, not only afterThe recipe butters the toast and finishes each cap with butter, but brushing the caps with melted butter or oil before broiling prevents them drying out under direct heat.
- Salt at the endSalting before broiling draws out moisture and slows browning. Season on the toast as the recipe directs.
- YieldNo quantity is given. Reckon two or three large caps and one round of toast per person as a first course or breakfast dish.
Broiled mushrooms on buttered toast is a long-established way English and American cooks handled the field mushroom, and it survives in loose-leaf and household cookbooks of the early twentieth century as a breakfast or supper savoury rather than a side dish. The instruction to peel the caps is a fossil of the wild-gathered era: mushrooms were foraged from pasture or bought from local growers, and paring the skin was as much about grit and toughness as appearance. Commercial cultivation of Agaricus in the United States expanded sharply in the decades around 1900. The buttered toast round is doing real work here, soaking up the dark juices that a flat cap gives off under heat.