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Boiled Mushrooms in Cream
Peel and trim the required quantity of mushrooms. Put some cream in a pan over the fire, with pepper and salt to taste; as quickly as it comes to the boil, have the mushrooms rubbed with salt and pepper, put them in the cream, and boil for four minutes. Serve very hot.
Mushrooms, Bordelaise Pour oil on a baking sheet, sprinkle it with breadcrumbs and minced parsley, then put in a layer of peeled and cleaned mushrooms, then more oil, parsley and breadcrumbs, next more mushrooms and finally oil, parsley, breadcrumbs, salt and pepper to taste. Place the dish in a moderate oven, bake the mushrooms for thirty minutes or so, and serve hot.
Broiled Mushrooms on Toast Trim off the stalks of the required quantity of large mushrooms, peel, score them once across the top, place them on a gridiron and grill over a slow fire, turning when done on one side. Cut some slices of bread, trim off the crusts and toast them nicely on both sides. Cut some rounds out of the slices of toast the same size as the mushrooms, butter them and place a mushroom on each. Put a lump of butter in each mushroom and sprinkle over salt and pepper. Spread a fancy-edged dish-paper over a hot dish, arrange the toasts neatly on it, garnish with fried parsley, and serve at once.
Three short mushroom preparations in the terse professional style of a hotel kitchen: quantities are left to the cook, and the technique is the whole instruction. All three assume large flat cultivated mushrooms, not buttons.
- "The required quantity"No weights are given here, as often in this book. For four people, reckon on about a pound of mushrooms for the creamed version, and two or three large caps per person for the broiled toasts.
- PeelingPeeling the caps was standard when mushrooms arrived field-grown and gritty. Modern cultivated mushrooms need only a wipe; peeling costs you flavour and colour. Do trim the stalk bases and, for the broiled version, remove the stems entirely.
- Boiling creamCream boiled hard can break, and four minutes at a full rolling boil is a risk. Bring it just to a boil and hold it at a bare simmer; the mushrooms will release liquid and thin the sauce.
- Four minutesThat is enough for sliced or small whole mushrooms. Large caps left whole want closer to eight, and they will need turning. Judge by the cap yielding to a knife point rather than the clock.
- A moderate ovenIn period terms roughly 350-375F; about 350F works for the Bordelaise. Thirty minutes at that heat gives soft mushrooms in oily crumbs; if you want the top layer crisp, finish it under the broiler for a minute or two.
- Gridiron and slow fireA gridiron over dying coals translates to a stovetop grill pan on medium, or a broiler with the rack set low. Gills upward for the second side so the juices stay in the cap, which is where the lump of butter is meant to sit.
- Fried parsleyWhole sprigs, dried thoroughly, dropped into hot fat for a few seconds until they stop hissing. Wet parsley in hot fat spatters violently.
- Dish-paperA pierced paper doily laid on the serving platter to absorb butter. Purely a service convention of the period; skip it or use parchment.
Oscar Tschirky ran the dining rooms of the Waldorf and later the Waldorf-Astoria from 1893, and his 1896 Cook Book reads largely as a working reference for a large hotel brigade, though it was also sold to household readers, which is why entries like these give a method and leave the amounts to the cook. Cultivated mushroom growing was expanding rapidly in the United States in the 1890s, largely around Philadelphia and in converted cellars and caves, and mushrooms shifted in that period from a luxury garnish to something a hotel could put on a menu in quantity. "Bordelaise" here means only the oil, breadcrumb and parsley treatment associated with Bordeaux cooking; it has nothing to do with the red wine and marrow sauce of the same name.