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Stuffed Mushrooms
In one-half of a cupful of white stock soak one-quarter of a cupful of stale bread crumbs, add three-quarters of a cupful finely chopped cooked veal or chicken, one tablespoonful of butter, one-half teaspoonful of salt, one-half teaspoonful of onion juice and one-quarter of a teaspoonful of pepper. Cut the stalks from twenty large mushrooms, peel the caps and arrange them cup side up in a baking pan. Put a little of the mixture in each cup and sprinkle over a thin layer of buttered crumbs. Bake for ten minutes in a hot oven.
A straightforward stuffed mushroom that uses up leftover roast veal or chicken. Two things need translating: the stock-soaked crumb base, and what "a hot oven" meant on a range with no thermostat.
- Oven temperature"Hot oven" in books of this period is usually reckoned at roughly 400-450F, though no thermostat was involved and the term was relative. Ten minutes at that heat is enough to set the filling and brown the crumb topping; the mushrooms will release liquid, so use a shallow pan rather than a deep dish.
- White stockA light stock made from veal bones or chicken, not the browned beef stock used for soups. Any low-sodium chicken stock stands in. Half a cup of stock to a quarter cup of crumbs makes a wet base, but with three-quarters of a cup of chopped meat added the mixture comes together as a soft, spoonable filling.
- Stale bread crumbsSoft crumbs from day-old bread with the crust removed, not the dry sandy commercial kind. Dried crumbs will absorb the stock instantly and leave the filling pasty; if that is all you have, cut the stock to about a third of a cup.
- Buttered crumbsA standard preparation of the period: crumbs tossed in melted butter, on the order of a tablespoon of butter to half a cup of crumbs, until every crumb is coated. They brown more evenly than plain crumbs.
- Onion juiceGrate half a small onion and press the pulp through a sieve, or grate it on a microplane and use the liquid. Half a teaspoon of finely grated onion is a fair substitute; chopped onion will stay raw in ten minutes.
- Peeling the capsPeeling was a routine instruction in books of this period. Modern white or cremini mushrooms need only a wipe with a damp cloth -- peeling wastes flesh and makes the caps limp. Do reserve the chopped stalks; they can go into the filling.
- Choice of mushroom"Twenty large mushrooms" gives no size, but the quantity of filling suggests caps of a couple of inches across. Portobello caps are larger than this amount of filling suits; large stuffing-grade white mushrooms or cremini match better.
- YieldTwenty stuffed caps serve four as a first course, or six to eight passed as an appetizer. They are best within a few minutes of leaving the oven, before the caps give up more water.
Commercial cultivation of mushrooms in caves and cellars was making them a reliable market item in cities like Philadelphia and New York. Recipes of this type also show the period's routine thrift — three-quarters of a cup of chopped cooked veal or chicken uses up the remains of a joint or a boiled fowl, and the stock-soaked crumb panade was the standard way to stretch it. Onion juice, pressed from grated onion, appears constantly in turn-of-the-century American recipes as a way to get onion flavor without visible pieces, a refinement of genteel cooking that has since fallen out of use.