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Fresh Mushroom Sauce
1 Put in a granite ware or porcelain lined saucepan two tablespoonfuls of butter. When hot add two cups of fresh, prepared mushrooms, cover closely and cook briskly five minutes. Season to taste, with salt and pepper and serve with broiled beefsteak, birds or sweetbreads.
A three-line pan sauce that stands or falls on the heat under the pan. The instruction that matters is "cook briskly": butter hot enough to sizzle, mushrooms in, lid on, five minutes and no dawdling.
- "Prepared" mushroomsIn period usage this generally meant wiped or peeled, stems trimmed, and cut up. Peeling is unnecessary with modern cultivated mushrooms; wipe them and trim the stem base.
- Two cups, in weightTwo cups of sliced mushrooms is roughly 5 to 6 ounces. It reduces to well under a cup once the water comes out.
- Why granite ware or porcelainEnamelled or lined pans were specified because bare iron, copper and aluminium darken mushrooms and turn the liquor grey. Stainless steel or enamelled cast iron does the same job now.
- Covered means steamedWith the lid on, the mushrooms release their liquid and stew in it rather than browning. That is the intended result here: a pale sauce with its own juices. If you want colour, cook uncovered in a wide pan first, then cover for the last two minutes.
- Salt at the endThe recipe seasons after cooking, which is right for this method. Salt added at the start pulls water out early and you lose the brisk five-minute window.
- Butter quantityTwo tablespoons for six ounces of mushrooms is generous by design, since the melted butter and mushroom liquor together are the sauce. There is no thickening; if you want body, whisk in a further knob of cold butter off the heat.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; two cups of mushrooms would probably serve two or three spooned over steak, small birds or sweetbreads. Double it if you are serving four.
- If you are using foraged mushroomsOnly cook wild mushrooms you have identified with certainty; several toxic species resemble the common field mushroom closely.
A plain butter-and-mushroom sauce suited anything broiled quickly -- beefsteak, small birds, sweetbreads -- which is the use the recipe itself names. Cultivated mushrooms were still a relative luxury in American markets at the turn of the century, grown in caves and cellars, which may be why the recipe insists on "fresh" as a distinction against the tinned and dried mushrooms then sold. The specification of granite ware or porcelain lining reflects a period concern with metal pans discolouring pale foods, for which enamelled ware was the usual recommended fix. The technique -- mushrooms cooked briefly in butter and served in their own liquor -- is close to French practice, where such mushrooms served as garnish and sauce at once.