Parasols and Morel
Are we gradually becoming a little more catholic in our taste for that delectable and most wholesome form of food which has the pleasant names of mushroom and toadstool, and the offensive name of fungus? n Such passages as this, which I quote from a friend's letter, and could t
support from others' testimony, suggests greater catholicity. " We have become much more fungivorous. I have today gathered some beautiful specimens of the Parasol (Lepiota procera), and puff-balls are seized on by us eagerly. We venture on eight or nine different toadstools, and all are excellent, if not equal to the truly incomparable field mush- room. We smile when we see rubber mushrooms in the shops at 15s. or so the pound. Why don't the cultivators get their spawn from the fields? And where do they get it? Or does it acquire rubber and lose taste under cultivation? " That the field mushroom from the field has incomparably more flavour than the cultivated mushroom is quite beyond dispute. Of the others, puff-balls depend largely on skill in cooking their slices. The morel is perhaps the nearest rival to the mushroom.
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