No. 722

Puree of Cultivated and Wild Mushrooms and Morils

Puree de Champignons Cultives et de Prairies et de Morilles

For the Cultivated Mushroom Puree.—Peel a pound of mushrooms, wash them properly, and mince them finely, then put them into a saucepan with four ounces of butter, let them cook on a slow fire, and when nearly done, moisten them with two gills of veloute (No. 415), and the juice of a lemon. Pound and pass them through a sieve, return them to the saucepan to heat without boiling, and finish with two ounces of fine butter.

Puree of Wild Mushrooms.—Peel a pound of wild mushrooms, cut them up into squares and cook them in water, butter and lemon juice, in a saucepan closed hermetically; drain and pound to convert them to a paste, mixing in half their quantity of poached quenelle forcemeat (No. 89). Add a few spoonfuls of very thick bechamel (No. 409), and season with salt and sugar; press through a tammy, set the puree into a saucepan, and heat it well without boiling, and before serving stir in a little fine butter, and some cream should the puree be too thick.

For the Morils.—Have two pounds of them; cut off the stalks and divide them in two; wash them in tepid water changing it several times, and when clean, drain, and mince them well. Wash them again in tepid water, and drain once more. Heat four ounces of butter in a sautoire, add the morils with lemon juice, and moisten with one pint of broth (No. 189), salt, and pepper; let boil for ten minutes, drain and pour off the top of the broth. Pound the morils, moisten them with this broth, adding a pint of bechamel (No. 409), a spoonful of meat glaze (No. 401), and heat it well without boiling, finishing with two ounces of butter.

← No. 721 Puree of Lobster Garnishings No. 723 Puree of White Onions Soubise and Puree of O →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Three related purées from Ranhofer's garnish chapter, each built on the same pattern: cook the mushrooms in butter and acid, pound them, loosen with a mother sauce, finish with butter off the boil. They are components rather than dishes, meant to fill croustades and tartlets or to bed a garnished entrée.

The hinge: never let it boilEach version ends with "heat it well without boiling" and a butter finish. Once a flour-thickened sauce enriched with whole butter reaches a boil the emulsion breaks and the purée turns greasy and thin. Hold it at a bare steam, and add the butter with the pan off the heat.
Gills and pintsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of velouté is one cup. Ranhofer's pints are US pints, 16 fl oz.
The cross-referenced saucesVelouté (No. 415) is a white roux loosened with veal or chicken stock; béchamel (No. 409) is the milk version, wanted here "very thick", nearly a paste. Meat glaze (No. 401) is stock reduced to a syrup — a spoonful of commercial demi-glace concentrate stands in. Quenelle forcemeat (No. 89) is a pounded forcemeat, poached before it goes into the purée as the recipe specifies; it is there as a binder and pushes the wild-mushroom version towards a mousse rather than a sauce.
Pans and strainingA sautoire is a shallow straight-sided sauté pan. "Closed hermetically" means a tight lid, or a round of buttered parchment pressed onto the mushrooms under the lid, so nothing evaporates. A tammy is a fine woven cloth the purée was forced through with two people twisting the ends; a drum sieve, then a food mill or a blender followed by a fine chinois, gets further with less labour.
"Peel a pound of mushrooms"Nineteenth-century cooks routinely peeled cultivated mushrooms, probably for appearance and to be rid of grit. Modern cultivated buttons need only trimming and a quick wash. Reserve the trimmings for stock.
Morels: the double washing is not fussinessMorels are hollow and honeycombed and hold sand and insects; the repeated changes of tepid water are the point of the method. They must also be thoroughly cooked — raw or barely cooked morels cause gastric illness even in edible species — so the ten-minute boil in broth is doing real work. Dried morels, rehydrated, can stand in for fresh, and the soaking liquid can replace some of the broth.
"Wild mushrooms of the prairie"The French title says champignons de prairie, meadow mushrooms (Agaricus campestris), a close relative of the cultivated button and the intended species here. Any foraged mushroom needs positive identification by someone competent before it goes in a pan; cremini or a mix of cultivated oyster and shiitake gives the same effect with none of the risk.
SeasoningThe sugar in the wild-mushroom version is a corrective for the lemon juice and the flour, not a sweetener — a pinch. Season the finished purée after the butter goes in, since reduction and the glaze both carry salt.
Yield and keepingYields differ by version: the cultivated purée makes a couple of cups, while the morel version, with its pint of béchamel and broth, makes considerably more. They hold a day covered in the refrigerator and reheat over hot water, but do not freeze well once the butter is in.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's summary of roughly three decades (in two spells) as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its structure explains why a mushroom purée appears under "Garnishings" rather than among the vegetables: in the grand-service kitchen a purée was a building block, spooned into croustades and vol-au-vent, layered under a sweetbread, or thinned into a sauce, and the numbered cross-references let a brigade assemble it from stock components already standing on the range. Cultivated mushrooms were by then grown commercially in cellars and caves; meadow mushrooms were a seasonal item; morels were not cultivated at all and were a spring luxury, reaching the city fresh or dried.