Professor Peck speaks enthusiastically of this species. "It is found in woods, especially in hilly and mountainous districts, and occurs during rainy or showery weather from August to October. It is a pretty fungus, and very attractive to those who are neither botanists nor fungus eaters, and it is as good as it is beautiful. In our botanical expeditions in the vast wilderness of the Adirondack region, we were often obliged to camp in the woods several nights in succession. On such occasions this fungus sometimes formed a luxurious addition to our ordinarily simple and sometimes limited bill of fare."
Hydnum in the kitchen
The Hydnei may be cooked in the same manner as employed for the ordinary mushroom, or gathered and dried for winter use, a very common custom on the Continent. Owing to the somewhat firm, compact substance of these mushrooms they should be cooked slowly, in order to preserve their tenderness. Berkeley recommends that they be "previously" steeped in hot water. Badham especially favors the Hydnum stew, which he claims is "an excellent dish with a flavor of oysters." According to the same authority it yields also a "very good purée." The "oyster" flavor is recognized in many of the epicurean encomiums on this species. Various hints as to its culinary treatment will be found in a later chapter.
THE CORAL OR CLUB FUNGUS
Clavaria
A neglected feast
What frequenter of the summer and autumn woods has failed to observe that occasional dense cluster of creamy-colored, coral-like growth such as I have indicated at [Plate 30], and who has thought to gather up its fragile, succulent mass with designs on the cook? I have seen clusters of this fungus so dense and ample as to strikingly suggest a huge cauliflower, and representing many pounds in weight. But in the absence of popular appreciation it must needs decay by "whole hundred-weights" in the woods.
This is the Clavaria, or coral fungus—more literally translated, though less appropriate to this particular species, "club fungus"—a representative of a genus containing many edible species.
The one presented in the Plate is Clavaria formosa, or the elegant Clavaria. It grows from four to six inches in height, is deep creamy yellow or pale orange buff in color, and slightly reddish at tips of branches. It has a sweet taste, a fragile, brittle consistency, and white substance; its spores are pale-ochre colored. Curtis gives thirteen edible native species. Among them are the following, which hardly call for severe technical description, as the entire group are doubtless edible:
