Home › Chafing-Dish Cookery › Mushrooms with Bacon
Mushrooms with Bacon
8 slices bacon Mushrooms Fry the bacon in the usual way; just before it is done add the mushroons; fry and serve.
A chafing-dish recipe stripped to the bone: the quantity of mushrooms is left entirely to the cook, and the whole thing hinges on the bacon fat. A few notes on filling in the blanks.
- The missing quantityNo weight of mushrooms is given. For 8 slices of bacon, 8 to 12 oz of mushrooms is the right proportion — enough to soak up the rendered fat without steaming in it.
- Chafing dish means low, steady heatTiming -- The recipe gives no cooking time at all. In a skillet over medium heat, the bacon will render and crisp in 8 to 10 minutes.
- Pour off the fatEight slices render more fat than the mushrooms need. Leave 2 to 3 tablespoons in the pan and pour the rest off, or the mushrooms will poach in grease instead of browning.
- Add the mushrooms later than "just before"Mushrooms release their water before they brown. Give them 6 to 8 minutes in the pan on their own — well past the point the bacon is done — and lift the bacon out to stay crisp while they cook down.
- Preparing the mushroomsRecipes of this date may mean either cultivated or field mushrooms, and period cookbooks commonly instruct peeling the caps. Peeling is unnecessary with modern mushrooms; wipe them clean and halve or quarter anything larger than a walnut.
- SeasoningNone is specified. Salt cautiously at the end and add pepper; a squeeze of lemon cuts the fat.
- Yield and servingServes 4 as a savoury or light supper dish. No serving suggestion is given; dishes of this kind were often sent out on buttered toast, which absorbs the pan juices.
Chafing-dish cookery had a vogue in American homes from the 1890s into the 1920s, when the spirit lamp let a hostess cook at the table without a kitchen fire — the appeal was as much theatre as convenience, and chafing-dish chapters are common in general cookbooks of the era. Such recipes are correspondingly brief, since the format ruled out anything needing sustained high heat, an oven, or close attention: eggs, oysters, rarebits, creamed dishes and quick fries make up much of the repertoire. Mushrooms suited it well, being fast-cooking and, by around 1900, increasingly available from commercial growers rather than only from the field.