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Broiled Mushrooms
Wash mushrooms, remove stems, and place caps in a buttered broiler and broil five minutes, having cap side down first half of broiling. Serve on circular pieces of buttered dry toast. Put a small piece of butter in each cap, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and serve as soon as butter has melted. Care must be taken, in removing from broiler, to keep mushrooms cap side up, to prevent loss of juices.
A short, sound method that still works. The only real translation needed is the equipment and the mushroom itself.
- The broilerFannie Farmer means a hinged wire broiler held over coals or set in the range's broiling oven, not the overhead element in a modern oven. A hot cast-iron grill pan or a gas grill gives the same direct dry heat; under an oven broiler, set the rack close to the element.
- Gills down firstThe instruction to broil cap side down for the first half is the hinge of the recipe. It drives moisture out of the dense cap, and turning gill side down at the end would empty the mushroom of the juices the dish exists for.
- Which mushroomsThe book assumes ordinary market or field mushrooms. Cremini or small portobellos behave the same way; very small caps will dry out before they color.
- StemsThe recipe does not say why they come off, though a stemless cap sits flat and holds the butter. The stems can be kept for stock or chopped into a duxelles.
- WashingFarmer simply says to wash them. Cultivated ones need only a wipe or a quick rinse and a firm pat dry, since a wet cap steams rather than browns.
- Five minutesAccurate for a fierce fire and a medium cap. Judge by the cap darkening and beads of liquid gathering in the gills rather than by the clock; overcooked, they shrink and toughen.
- The toast"Buttered dry toast" is plain toast, buttered, as opposed to milk or cream toast; the dryness keeps it from going soggy under the juices. Cut rounds a little larger than the caps.
- YieldNo quantity is given. Reckon four to six good caps per person as a side, three or four on toast as a savory or light supper course.
Broiled mushrooms on toast suit the late-Victorian and Edwardian taste for the "savory" a small hot dish of something intensely flavored served on toast, a course associated chiefly with British dinners and breakfasts. The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book appeared in 1896, by which time commercial mushroom growing in cellars and caves was still a fairly young industry in the United States, and the mushrooms were priced well above a staple. Her insistence on keeping them cap side up when lifting them from the broiler is characteristic of the book: a small, exact, physically observed instruction.