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Canned Mushrooms
Canned mushrooms should not be boiled, as they are already cooked and a second boiling only toughens them. A dainty method of preparing them is as follows: To a can of mushrooms allow one egg (yolk only), one-half pint of milk, one tablespoon of butter, one tablespoon of flour and salt and pepper to taste. Put the butter in the stewpan, and when hot, add the flour, mix until smooth, and add the milk. Stir continually until the liquid boils; then add the mushrooms, salt and pepper, and stir until well heated. Take from the fire, add the beaten yolk, stir it well in, and serve.
A creamed mushroom dish built on a small white sauce, thickened at the last moment with an egg yolk. The whole thing takes ten minutes and the only real risk is scrambling the yolk.
- The hinge: add the yolk off the heatTake the pan from the burner, let it stop bubbling for a few seconds, then stir the beaten yolk in. Returning it to direct heat curdles it into flecks; if you want it hotter, set the pan over the merest warmth and stir constantly.
- Half a pint of milkOne cup. With one tablespoon each of butter and flour this gives a thin pouring sauce. For a thicker coating sauce use two tablespoons of each.
- A can of mushroomsThe recipe gives no weight; a modern 8 oz can of pieces and stems, drained, is a reasonable stand-in. Drain and rinse them, since the packing liquid is salty and slightly metallic, and hold off on salt until the sauce is assembled.
- Why no boilingThe advice is sound. Canned mushrooms have already been cooked through in the retort, and a second boil drives out water and turns them squeaky. Heat them just to serving temperature in the finished sauce.
- StewpanAny small heavy saucepan. Cook the flour in the butter for a minute before the milk goes in so the sauce does not taste pasty, and add the milk gradually while stirring.
- Fresh mushrooms insteadIf you use fresh, sauté about 8 oz of sliced mushrooms in the butter first, then sprinkle the flour over them and proceed. Fresh mushrooms release liquid, so the sauce will be looser than the canned version.
- Yield and servingTwo servings as a vegetable course. The recipe gives no serving vehicle; it works on buttered toast, rice, in pastry shells, or under a poached egg.
Commercial mushroom growing in the United States was still small and largely concentrated near eastern cities, and cultivated fresh mushrooms were an expensive, short-season luxury; canned mushrooms, many of them imported, made them a shelf item that a middle-class household could keep on hand — which may be why this entry spends its first sentence correcting the reader's instinct to boil them. The dish itself is a thin béchamel enriched with an egg yolk, a liaison borrowed from French practice and by this date common in English-language cookbooks. Butterick, whose business was dress patterns and household advice for exactly that middle-class readership, treats the can as an ordinary pantry staple and offers what it calls a "dainty method" — a word the period often attached to small, mild dishes suited to a light supper or an invalid's tray.