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Mushrooms Baked in Cream
Peel and remove the stems of two dozen good-sized mushrooms. Arrange them in a shallow buttered pan, cap side upward. Dust each with salt and white pepper, add a bit of butter, using one large tablespoonful altogether. Pour over them two-thirds of a cupful of thin cream and bake for ten minutes in a hot oven. Lift the mushrooms to thin pieces of buttered toast and pour over them the cream which remains in the pan.
A simple open-faced toast dish; the only real work is managing the liquid the mushrooms give up.
- Hot oven"Hot oven" is generally taken as somewhere around 400-450F. At that heat the cream reduces rather than merely warms over the short bake.
- Thin cream"Thin cream" is light or single cream, roughly 18–20% fat. Half-and-half works; heavy cream will thicken too fast and coat rather than pool. Two-thirds of a cupful is about 160 ml.
- Skip the peelingPeeling was standard when mushrooms came in gritty from field or forcing bed. Cultivated mushrooms today need only a wipe with a damp cloth.
- Ten minutes is optimisticLarge caps will release a good deal of water. Expect 15–20 minutes for the liquid to reduce to a sauce, and start them cap side down for the first few minutes if you want the cavities to fill rather than flood the pan.
- CrowdingUse a pan wide enough that the caps sit in one layer without touching. Packed together they steam and the cream stays watery.
- The stemsNothing here uses them, but do not bin them hey a a duxelles-style mixture, chopped and fried in butter, to spread on the toast under the caps.
- White pepperProbably specified for appearance: black flecks were considered a fault in a pale cream dish. Black pepper will do, though it tastes rather different.
- YieldTwo dozen good-sized caps and four to six slices of toast serve four as a light course or two as a supper. Toast the bread at the last moment; it goes soggy within minutes of the cream hitting it.
Mushrooms on toast belongs to the late-Victorian and Edwardian savoury course, the small hot dish served after the sweet at a formal dinner or, in a plainer household, as a supper or breakfast plate. The recipe's insistence on peeling is often taken as a clue to its date. Cooks were used to handling caps that came with soil and bruised skin attached. Cream baking, rather than frying, was the genteel treatment.