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Gourmands' Mushrooms
There was a man in Ghent who loved mushrooms, but he could only eat them done in this fashion. If you said, "Monsieur, will you have them tossed in butter?" he would roar out, "No--do you take me for a Prussian? Let me have them properly cooked." Melt in a pan a lump of butter the size of a tangerine orange and squeeze on it the juice of half a lemon. The way to get a great deal of juice from a lemon is to plunge it first of all for a few minutes, say five minutes, in boiling water. When the butter simmers, throw in a pound of picked small mushrooms, stir them constantly, do not let them get black. Then in three or four minutes they are well impregnated with butter, and the chief difficulty of the dish is over. Put the saucepan further on the fire, let it boil for a few minutes. Take out the mushrooms, drain them, sprinkle them with flour, moisten them with gravy, season with salt and pepper, put them back in the butter and stir in the yolk of an egg. Add also a little of the lemon juice that remains. While you are doing this you must get another person to cut and toast some bread and to butter it. Pour on to the bread the mushrooms (which are fit for the greatest saints to eat on Fridays), and serve them very hot.
A buttery mushroom ragout finished with egg yolk and served on toast. The whole dish turns on the last step, so have everything else ready before the yolk goes in.
- The egg yolk must not boilOnce the yolk goes in, the pan should be off direct heat or barely at a simmer. Boil it and the sauce breaks into curds and buttery liquid instead of thickening to a glaze.
- Butter the size of a tangerineRoughly 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons. It is a generous amount for a pound of mushrooms and it is meant to be: the butter becomes the sauce.
- "Further on the fire"Most likely means moving the pan more directly over the heat, since the recipe then calls for a few minutes' boiling. Slacken the heat again before the yolk goes in.
- GravyHere this means meat juices or a well-reduced brown stock, not a thickened flour gravy. A few tablespoons of good beef or veal stock does the job; vegetable stock works but gives a thinner result.
- Mushrooms"Picked small mushrooms" means small button mushrooms, wiped rather than washed and left whole. A pound is about 450 g.
- Do not let them get blackMost likely a warning against the mushrooms scorching or discolouring in the pan; the lemon juice added at the outset helps. Keep the pan moving during the first three or four minutes.
- The lemon trickWarming a lemon in hot water for a few minutes does help it give up more juice; rolling it firmly under your palm achieves much the same. Reserve some juice for the finish, as the recipe directs.
- YieldA pound of mushrooms on toast serves two as a light supper or four as a first course. The toast should be cut thick and buttered, and both toast and mushrooms want to hit the table hot.
The Belgian Cook Book was compiled by Mrs. Brian Luck in 1915 from recipes given by Belgian refugees who had fled to England after the German invasion, and the wartime temper shows plainly in this entry: the gourmand of Ghent will not have his mushrooms merely tossed in butter, because that is what he imagines a Prussian would do. The joke about mushrooms "fit for the greatest saints to eat on Fridays" points to the Catholic rule of abstinence from meat on Fridays, when a rich vegetable dish on buttered toast stood in for the roast, though the spoonful of meat gravy here rather undercuts the piety. Finishing a sauce with egg yolk and lemon was common French-Belgian household practice of the period rather than anything peculiar to this cook.