Important: Safety Warning
This recipe calls for animal brains or related nervous-system tissue. Cattle brain and spinal tissue can transmit bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the cause of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, which is fatal and has no treatment.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
Mushrooms
Remove stem. Wash, peel caps and break in pieces. Saute in melted butter. While hot season with salt and pepper. Cook in white sauce slowly for five minutes and serve on toast. Mushrooms can be boiled or stewed. Proportions: 2 cups mushrooms. 2 tablespoons butter. 1 cup cream sauce. 6 pieces round, buttered toast.
Canned mushrooms are used in the same way, only they are already prepared for cooking.
CREAM BRAINS AND SWEETBREADS IN PATE CASES. 1/2 teaspoon salt. 1 pair sweetbreads. 1 pt. brains. 1 cup button mushrooms. 1 lemon. 2 tablespoons butter. Dash of cayenne. 1 1/2 cups milk. 1 tablespoon flour.
Soak brains and sweetbreads in cold water. Boil with lemon juice, salt and pepper. Make sauce with butter and flour. Add brains and sweetbreads. Fill ramekins or pate shells. Sprinkle with parsley.
Two dishes share this page: a plain sauté of mushrooms in cream sauce, and a second recipe for creamed brains and sweetbreads in pastry cases. The first is straightforward; the second should not be attempted.
- The brains are the problemBovine brain and spinal cord are specified risk materials for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, which causes variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. Their sale for food is prohibited or tightly restricted in many jurisdictions, usually according to the age of the animal, and no domestic cooking step inactivates prions. Skip the second recipe entirely; if you want a sweetbread dish, use a current recipe from a source that addresses sourcing.
- Sweetbreads tooEven setting the brains aside, the second recipe gives no blanching time, no simmering time and no finishing temperature — "boil with lemon juice" is the whole instruction for a delicate offal that spoils quickly. There is nothing here to make safe.
- Peeling the capsCookbooks of the period routinely directed peeling mushroom caps. Cultivated white and cremini mushrooms need neither peeling nor washing; wipe them, trim the stem end, and slice. Skinning them costs you flavour and yield.
- Dry pan firstTwo cups of mushrooms in two tablespoons of butter will steam in their own liquid before they colour. Sauté in a wide pan over fairly high heat until the released water has evaporated and the edges brown, then add the butter and season.
- "White sauce" and "cream sauce"The recipe uses both terms for the same thing. No proportions are given for the mushroom sauce beyond "1 cup cream sauce" in Wilson's list; the second recipe's sauce is 2 tablespoons butter, 1 tablespoon flour and 1 1/2 cups milk.
- SaltingSeason after the mushrooms have browned rather than before; salt draws moisture out early and can leave them pale and slack.
- Canned mushroomsThe note that canned mushrooms are "already prepared" is accurate but they carry a brine flavour. Drain, rinse and dry them, and cut the salt in the sauce.
- YieldTwo cups of raw mushrooms cook down considerably; with six rounds of toast this serves three as a light entrée or six as a savoury course.
Creamed things on toast were a staple of the American entrée course in the 1910s and 1920s, and this book leans on the formula hard, because a cup of white sauce stretches an expensive ingredient across six plates. That is also why mushrooms and brains sit on the same page: both are "entrées" in the older sense, a small made dish served between heavier courses, and both were valued as meat-tasting foods that used little meat. Brains and sweetbreads were ordinary butcher's goods then, and cheap. The BSE epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s ended that for brain, and the regulations that followed are the reason a recipe printed as routine home cooking a century ago now reads as a warning label.