The CWI Cookbook

Posts Tagged ‘mushrooms’

 Mushrooms, fresh
Pepper
Salt
Mace
Butter
Maitre d’hotel sauce

Take fresh ones,–the size is not very important,–cut off nearly all the stalks, and wipe off the skin with wet flannel. Arrange neatly in a pie-dish, pepper and salt, sprinkle a little mace among them, and lay a bit of butter upon each. Bake about half an hour, basting now and then with butter and water, that they may not be too dry. Serve in the dish in which they were baked, with maitre d’hotel sauce poured over them.

Common Sense in the Household by Marion Harland, New York, 1871

Comment: Unless you gather your mushrooms yourself in the wild, you can skip the wiping-with-wet-flannel step called for here. The complication will come not from the recipe, which is very plain when compared to the stuffed mushrooms for which chain restaurants so notoriously overcharge, but the maitre d’hotel sauce, which is complicated in the extreme. We will not tell anybody if you quietly use Worcester sauce or something else to your taste instead.

 Mushrooms
Warm milk
Salt
Pepper
Veal or chicken broth, or drawn butter
Flour wet in cold milk
1 egg, beaten

Rub them white, stew in water ten minutes; strain partially, and cover with as much warm milk as you have poured off water; stew five minutes in this; salt, pepper and add some veal or chicken gravy, or drawn butter. Thicken with a little flour wet in cold milk, and a beaten egg.

Common Sense in the Household by Marion Harland, New York, 1871

Comment: As Mrs. Harland does not specify what sort of mushrooms are suitable for this recipe, we will not do so either, except to note that it would be a shame to waste this much effort on plain canned button varieties. This is apparently intended as a side dish although it would seem to make an excellent mushroom sauce if thickened just a bit more than is called for here.