All fungi are the better for slow cooking. The H. pratensis in all its forms is excellent, but particularly so in croquettes and patés.
H. virgin´eus Fr.—virgo, a virgin. (Plate [XXXVII], fig. 6, p. 146.) Wholly white. Pileus fleshy, convex then plane, obtuse, moist, at length depressed, cracked into patches, floccose when dry. Stem curt, stuffed, firm, attenuated at the base, externally becoming even and naked. Gills decurrent, distant, rather thick. Fries.
Flesh sometimes equal, sometimes abruptly thin. Commonly confounded with H. niveus, but it is more difficult to distinguish it from white forms of H. pratensis. It is distinguished chiefly by its smaller stature, by the color being constantly white, sometimes becoming pale, by the obtuse pileus being scarcely turbinate, at length cracked into patches and floccose when dry, and by the gills being thinner, etc.
In pastures. Common. Stevenson.
Spores 12×5–6µ Cooke.
Tastes like M. oreades. M.J.B. Delicious broiled or stewed. Cooke.
“Mony littles make muckle,” says the Scotch proverb. It applies well to the brave little toadstool looking through the first grass of lawns for the coming of spring, and coming again in the autumn, defiant of early frosts. Small though it be, its numbers soon fill the basket.
The “Ivory Caps” are plentiful, and extend their haunts to the woods, where thick mold or grassy places abound.
H. ni´veus Fr.—niveus, snow-white. (Plate [XXXVII], fig. 7, p. 146.) Wholly white. Pileus scarcely reaching 1 in. broad, somewhat membranaceous, and without a more compact disk, hence truly umbilicate, bell-shaped then convex, smooth, striate and viscid when moist, not cracked when dry. Flesh thin, everywhere equal, white, hygrophanous. Stem 2 in. or a little more long, 1–2 lines thick, tubed, equal, even, smooth, tense and straight. Gills decurrent, distant, thin, scarcely connected by veins, arcuate, quite entire.
Thinner, tougher, and later than H. virgineus, etc. Being hygrophanous the pileus is shining white when dry. Very tender forms occur.