Vegetable substances used for the food of man / [Edwin Lankester].

  • Edwin Lankester
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vegetable substances used for the food of man / [Edwin Lankester]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    inches round the stem, weighed as much as one pound eight ounces.* The mushroom is chiefly used to communicate its peculiar flavour to-ragouts, or is served up by itself, prepared with rich gravy. The ‘button,’ or fleshy part, is the only portion employed, the stem, gill, and skin being removed. One very general application of mushrooms is, in converting them into the sauce called catsup. For this purpose they are laid for some time in salt, by which means a juice is extracted which is afterwards boiled with spices. The places in which mushrooms chiefly grow are dry and rich old pastures, where they are gathered in the months of August and September. Their powers of vegetation are extremely strong ; this is instanced by the following circumstance. Some men in the Isle of Wight, a few years ago, observed a large stone rising considerably at the interstices, and upon removing the pavement to dis- cover the cause, found it to be occasioned by a mushroom, the vigorous efforts of which, to increase upwards, had forced the stone from its proper station. In some parts of the country mushrooms are to be found in great abundance, and sometimes under circumstances and situations very unexpected. Some cultivators of a patch of potatoes situated in a field in Derbyshire, proceeding to dig up their crop, found, to their great surprise, that a large quantity of fine mushrooms had sprung up among their po- tatoes, and in a small space of ground they gathered at least five pecks. The ground, previously to plant- ing the potatoes, had been dressed with road- scrapings, and with a small quantity of moss taken * ¢ Manchester Herald,’ Sept. 1827. t+ Gard. Mag. vol. iv.