This species is cosmopolitan, and is a great favorite on the Continent--in France being known as the _Coulemelle_, in Italy as _Bubbola maggiore_, and in Spain as _Cogomelos_. It is by many considered as the choicest of all mushrooms, and is indeed a delicious morsel when quickly broiled over coals, seasoned to taste with salt and pepper and butter melted in the gills, and served hot on buttered toast. Other recipes are noted in a later chapter. The scurfy spots and stems should be removed before cooking.
=Pileus:= At first egg-shaped, finally expanded like a parasol four to seven inches in diameter, the apex raised in a prominent mound or "umbo." Color pale buff or creamy, occasionally almost pure white, more or less regularly spotted with the brown shaggy patches of the separating epidermis, which remains of the pale brown color on the "umbo." Skin thick and somewhat tough; substance hygrometric, drying and swelling naturally in its haunts.
=Gills:= Unequal in length; crowded; at first almost white, finally becoming creamy or pale buff.
=Stem:= Tall, slender, equal, hollow, and fibrous; bulbous at base, but with no sign of a "cup;" separated from the gills above by a distinct space; surface streaked and speckled with brown, encircled by a loose ring.
=Spores:= White, and, like the whole plant, fragrant aromatic--more so, perhaps, than any other fungus.
=Taste:= Distinctly sweet and "nutty," slightly pungent when dry.
=Habitat:= Pastures and fields, occasionally woods.
This species is especially free from the swarming grubs too commonly found in mushrooms. It is highly hygrometric, dries naturally even while standing in the pasture, in which condition it is decidedly aromatic in fragrance and nutty sweet to the taste, as described. Indeed, it is sometimes called "the nut mushroom." Absorbing moisture from the dews and rains, it again becomes pulpy and enlarged, thus alternating for days between its juicy and dry condition, in which latter state it may be gathered and kept for winter use. It is a palatable morsel at all times, but especially in the prime of its first expansion, each successive alternation, with its gradual loss of spores, affecting its full flavor.
Among the wild species of mushrooms which the novice might possibly mistake for the common "mushroom" of the markets--which is popularly supposed to be the _only edible_ variety, as distinguished from "toadstools"--is the Russula group. They are extremely frequent in our woods from spring to late autumn, and have many features in common. Their caps vary in color from a gray-green, suggesting cheese-mould, to olive-red, scarlet-red, and purplish. The gills are generally of the same length, or practically so, occasionally double-branched, beginning at the stem and usually extending to the rim of the cap, at which portion they are covered by the mere skin of the pileus, a slightly fluted appearance being observable from above, which indicates the location of the radiating laminæ below (Plate 12, fig. 6).