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Deviled Mushrooms
Cut off the stalks even with the head, and peel and trim the mushrooms neatly. Brush them over inside with a paste-brush dipped in warm butter, and season with salt and pepper, and a small quantity of cayenne pepper. Put them on a gridiron and broil over a clear fire. When cooked, put the mushrooms on a hot dish, and serve.
A four-line recipe that depends entirely on the size and freshness of the mushrooms and on the heat you cook them over. Everything else is butter, salt and cayenne.
- The mushrooms"Peel and trim" suggests larger open caps rather than the tight white buttons sold today, though peeling was routine for all mushrooms in nineteenth-century kitchens. Portobello or large flat cremini caps are a reasonable modern match.
- Skip the peelingPeeling was standard practice in kitchens of the period. Cultivated mushrooms today need only a wipe with a damp cloth.
- Brush insideButtering the inside suggests cooking gill side up, so the cap holds the melted butter. The recipe does not say whether they are turned.
- GridironA gridiron is a hinged or flat grill set over coals. A charcoal grill is the true equivalent; a hot broiler with the rack about 4 inches from the element works, as does a ridged cast-iron pan.
- "Deviled"In this period deviling meant nothing more than sharp seasoning, usually cayenne and sometimes mustard. Oscar uses a small quantity of cayenne only, and the amount is left to the cook -- a scant pinch per cap is in keeping.
- TimingNot given. Large caps take roughly 5 to 8 minutes under a broiler, until the cap darkens and liquid pools in the gills. Pull them while that liquid is still there; cooked past it they turn leathery.
- Butter and smokeButter over a clear fire scorches. Clarified butter, or a mix of butter and a neutral oil, gives the same result without the milk solids burning black.
- ServingTwo or three caps per person as a savoury or a first course. Savouries of this kind were often served on toast, though this recipe calls only for a hot dish.
Oscar Tschirky ran the dining rooms of the Waldorf and later the Waldorf-Astoria from 1893, and his 1896 Cook Book is essentially the house repertoire of a large American hotel working in the French manner. Grilled mushrooms with cayenne belong to the English savoury tradition that New York hotels absorbed wholesale -- a small hot dish served after the sweet course or at supper, alongside deviled kidneys, deviled bones and anchovy toasts. "Deviling" as a term for hot seasoning is documented in English cookery from the late eighteenth century onward, and by Oscar's day it signalled cayenne almost automatically.