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Forcemeat of Mushrooms
Take one-fourth pound of button mushrooms, peel off the upper skin, cut off the stems, and, after pounding, put them into a stewpan with two ounces of butter; put in the mushrooms and stew slowly for about eight minutes, adding a little cayenne and ground allspice; turn them onto a plate, leaning them against one another, so that the fat will drain, and let them get cold; then chop very fine, and add one-fourth pound of breadcrumbs, season with a little grated nutmeg, mace, cayenne and salt, add a little butter, and mix the whole with the yolks of two eggs to make the mass firm, and pour in sufficient of the gravy from the mushrooms to render it of the desired thickness. Form it into balls, and either poach them for six minutes for soup, or fry them for seven minutes in butter, and use them to garnish roast poultry.
A Victorian-style forcemeat: mushrooms cooked down, bound with crumbs and yolk, then poached as soup garnish or fried to sit around a roast bird. The proportions and one or two of the steps need translating.
- The hinge: drain and cool before bindingThe instruction to lean the mushrooms against one another on a plate is about getting the butter and juices out, and the recipe depends on it. Bound while warm and wet, the mixture will not hold a ball, and the poached ones will disintegrate in the soup.
- Peeling mushroomsSkinning button mushrooms was standard practice when caps were older, larger and often grubby. Fresh cultivated buttons need only a wipe; trim the stem ends and skip the peeling.
- WeightsA quarter pound is 4 oz, about 115 g, of mushrooms and the same weight of breadcrumbs. Two ounces of butter is half a stick. The crumbs outweigh the cooked mushrooms considerably, so use fresh soft crumbs rather than dry packaged ones or the result is stodgy.
- PoundingA mortar was the tool; a few pulses in a food processor does the same, but stop short of a purée. The recipe chops again after cooking, so the first pounding is only to bruise the caps and start them releasing liquid.
- StewpanAn ordinary heavy saucepan. Eight minutes over low heat is enough to soften the mushrooms and draw out the juice you will later use to slacken the mixture; keep the pan covered so the liquid is not lost.
- SpicingAllspice, mace and nutmeg in a savoury forcemeat are period-standard, not a mistake. Mace is the outer covering of nutmeg and is milder; a pinch of each is plenty for this quantity.
- PoachingPoach in barely trembling stock or salted water, never a rolling boil, which will break the balls apart. Six minutes suits balls of about an inch; make them larger and they will need longer.
- FryingSeven minutes in butter over medium heat browns them through. Butter alone will darken at that length of time, so keep the heat moderate or add a little neutral oil to raise the smoke point.
- YieldRoughly 12 to 16 balls of an inch, enough to garnish one roast chicken or to float in soup for six.
Forcemeat comes from the French farce, a stuffing or seasoned bound mixture, and by the late nineteenth century an American professional kitchen would likely have kept several kinds on hand: veal, chicken, fish, and meatless versions like this one. Small forcemeat balls were among the standard garnishes of the period, dropped into clear soups where quenelles would be too rich or arranged around a roast to fill out the platter, and they belonged to a style of service in which the look of the dish mattered as much as the eating. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's famous ma u00eetre d'h u00f4tel, published his book in 1896, and it is generally taken to draw on the working repertoire of a grand hotel kitchen, which would explain why an item like this appears with no menu context at all: it is a component, not a course. The heavy hand with nutmeg, mace and allspice in a savoury preparation is also characteristic of the era, a survival from older English cookery that would fade over the next few decades.