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Fresh Mushrooms Sur Cloche
Cut off the tails, peel and thoroughly wash a pound even-sized, very fresh mushrooms and drain on a cloth. Arrange in a sautoire with an ounce butter, season with a teaspoon salt, half teaspoon pepper and gently fry for six minutes, frequently tossing meanwhile. Prepare six round toasts two and a half inches in diameter, place each toast in a shirred-egg dish, evenly divide mushrooms over the six toasts and cover with six mushroom bell glasses. Place one and a half gills cream in a bowl and add two tablespoons sherry, half teaspoon salt, a saltspoon each cayenne and grated nutmeg, mix well, pour cream evenly in dishes around the bells, set in oven with door open for ten minutes, remove, wipe all around and serve.
A straightforward mushroom savoury whose only real complication is the equipment: it wants six small glass domes and six individual dishes. The technique translates easily to any ovenproof ramekin covered tightly with foil, or to small lidded glass cocottes.
- The hinge: the clocheThe glass bell traps the mushroom steam and sherry vapour so that the aroma hits the diner when it is lifted at the table. If you cannot cover each portion airtight, the dish loses its point; foil crimped over a ramekin works, but lift it in front of whoever is eating.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills of cream is 3/4 cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon.
- SautoireA wide, straight-sided shallow pan — a modern sauté pan. A pound of mushrooms needs room to drive off water rather than stew, so use the largest one you have.
- Shirred-egg dishA small, shallow individual gratin dish, roughly 4-5 inches across. Any ramekin of similar footprint will hold a 2.5-inch toast with cream poured around it.
- Peeling mushroomsThe instruction to peel and thoroughly wash suggests caps that arrived dirtier than today's. Modern button and cremini mushrooms need only a wipe; peeling wastes flesh, and a damp towel does the job of washing and draining on a cloth.
- Oven with the door openA vague instruction that means gentle, indirect heat. A moderate oven of roughly 325-350F is a reasonable modern equivalent, with the propped door presumably keeping the cream from boiling in the ten minutes given.
- SeasoningA teaspoon of salt for a pound of mushrooms plus another half teaspoon in the cream is heavy by current taste, especially with salted butter. Season the mushrooms lightly and correct the cream at the end.
- SherryUse a dry amontillado or fino, not cream sherry. It is added raw to the cream and cooks only briefly, so its character carries straight through.
- YieldSix portions as a first course or savoury; three as a light lunch with a salad.
Cooking sous cloche — under a glass bell — was a hotel and restaurant flourish of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, suited to a style of service in which the moment of unveiling happened in front of the diner rather than in the kitchen. Mushrooms are the filling one meets most often, their perfume being volatile and easily lost before a covered dish reaches the table. The International Cook Book was compiled by Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and the recipe carries the marks of that world: individual dishes, a specialised piece of glassware assumed to be on hand, and a cream-and-sherry mixture poured around rather than over.