Over-cooking is apt to make it tough. I find steaming in the oven with butter, pepper, and salt, and a very small quantity of water, as oysters are steamed, a very good method of preserving the juices and flavor.
It is found in Maryland, under the pines and sometimes in mossy and swampy places. Prof. Underwood, President of the New York Mycological Club, reports it as fairly abundant in Connecticut.
Lactarius volemus Fries, the "Orange-Brown Lactar," somewhat resembles the L. deliciosus in shape and size, but the cap is dry and glabrous and the skin is apt to crack in patches in somewhat the same manner as does that of the Russula virescens. It is a warm orange-brown in color, varying slightly with age, and is not zoned. The gills are white or yellowish and crowded, adnate in the young specimens, and decurrent in the mature, exuding a white milk when bruised. The spores are globose, and white. It is found in open woods. The flavor is much like that of L. deliciosus, although perhaps not so rich.
One author states it as his experience that the Lactars which have bright-colored milk, unchanging, are usually edible and have a mild taste. L. indigo Schwein has been recorded as less abundant than some other species, but edible. The plant is a deep blue throughout, the milk of the same color and unchanging. The taste of both flesh and milk is mild. Specimens of this species were sent to me from western New York several years ago by a correspondent who found it growing in quantities in a corn field. He had cooked several dishes of it, and reported its flavor as very agreeable.
L. vellereus and L. piperatus are very common in fir woods. The plants are large and stout, white throughout, the milk white and excessively acrid; gills decurrent, unequal and narrow. The milk in vellereus is apt to be scanty but copious in piperatus.
Of L. piperatus, Worthington Smith says: "So strongly acrid is the milk that if it be allowed to trickle over tender hands it will sting like the contact of nettles; and if a drop be placed on the lips or tongue the sensation will be like the scalding of boiling water." He records it as "poisonous." Fries and Curtis say that, "notwithstanding its intense acridity, it is edible when cooked." Cordier, while recording it as edible, says that the milk, and butter made from the milk of cows fed with it, are bitter and nauseous, although cows eat it with avidity. Gibson, while quoting one or two authors as to its edibility when cooked, says: "Its decidedly ardent tang warns me not to dwell too enthusiastically upon its merits in a limited selection of desirable esculents." The Secretary of the Boston Mycological Club, writing in the Club bulletin, says "it has been eaten as a sort of duty after the acridity was cooked out," but does not commend it. It is spoken of as "an unattractive fungus which usurps in the woods the place that might well be occupied by something better." In this opinion I fully concur.
L. torminosus, "Wooly Lactarius," sometimes called the "Colic Lactarius," has been termed acrid and poisonous by Badham. Cordier and Letellier, on the other hand, say that it can be eaten with impunity when cooked. Gillet declares it deleterious and even dangerous in the raw state, constituting a very strong and drastic purgative. One author states that, although it does not constitute an agreeable article of food, it is eaten in some parts of France and in Russia. Considering the differences of opinion which exist with regard to this and other extremely acrid species, it would seem the part of prudence for persons with delicate stomachs to avoid the use of very acrid species, for, though the acridity may be expelled by cooking, there would seem to be no necessity for risking unpleasant or dangerous results while the range of unquestionably wholesome and agreeable species is sufficiently wide to satisfy the most enthusiastic mycophagist.
AGARICINI.
Leucospori (spores white or yellowish).
Armillaria Fries. Cooke places Armillaria in the order Agaricini, genus Agaricus, making of it a sub-genus. Saccardo, in taking it out of Agaricus, elevates it to the position of a separate genus. The name Armillaria is derived from a Greek word, meaning a ring or bracelet, referring to its ringed stem.