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Mushrooms Au Gratin
1/2 pound mushrooms 1 sliced onion 2 tablespoons cooking oil 2 tablespoons flour 1 cup mushroom stock (made from stems) 1/2 cup bread-crums 1/16 teaspoon pepper 1/4 teaspoon paprika 1 tablespoon butter 1/2 teaspoon salt Juice of 1 lemon Peel the mushrooms and sprinkle salt over them to extract the water. Fry the onion in the oil. Add the flour and brown; add the stock and seasonings and cook the sauce until it is thickened. Drain the mushrooms and add them to the sauce. Put into a baking-dish, sprinkle with crums and bake until the crums are slightly browned.
A simple brown-sauce gratin from the era when mushrooms were still peeled as a matter of course. It comes together quickly once the stock is made.
- Skip the peelingCultivated white mushrooms no longer need peeling; wipe them clean and trim the stems. Peeling was standard when caps were larger, tougher and often field-gathered.
- The stockThe recipe calls for a cup of mushroom stock "made from stems" but never says how to produce it. Simmering the reserved stems in about a cup and a half of water for twenty minutes, then straining, gives enough. Mushroom broth or a light vegetable stock substitutes without complaint.
- Salting the mushroomsGive them 15 to 20 minutes under the salt, then drain and pat dry. This is the step that keeps the finished dish from going watery, since the mushrooms go into the sauce raw.
- Browning the flourCook the flour in the oil until it smells nutty and turns the color of weak coffee, three to five minutes over medium heat. Undercooked, it tastes of raw paste; the whole character of the dish is in that brown roux.
- 1/16 teaspoon pepperA recognizable old measure, roughly two good grinds. Season to taste rather than measuring it.
- The butter and lemonNeither is placed in the method. Dot the butter over the crumbs before baking, and stir the lemon juice into the finished sauce off the heat.
- OvenNo temperature is given. A hot oven, 425F, for 15 to 20 minutes will brown the crumbs; toss the crumbs with the butter first for even color.
- YieldHalf a pound of mushrooms makes a side dish for two, three at a stretch. Doubles cleanly in a wider dish, which gives more crumb surface.
Au gratin means nothing more than baked with a browned top, from the French gratter, to scrape -- the sense usually given is the crust scraped from the dish. What dates this particular recipe is the instruction to peel the mushrooms and salt them dry: both appear in household manuals into the 1920s, when mushrooms reaching the home cook were often larger and sometimes wild. The use of cooking oil rather than butter for the roux, with butter reserved for the crumbs, may reflect economy, though the recipe itself says nothing about cost.