MUSHROOMS. 497 
The place was then known as the Mulberry Garden. In the 
time of the Commonwealth it became a resort for pleasant 
entertainment, and fashionable folk forsook Spring Gardens 
for this Mulberry Garden. Pepys called it “a very silly place.” 
John Dryden was fond of going there to eat tarts. From the 
Book of Maccabees we learn that the juice of Mulberries, being 
red like blood, was employed for exciting the elephants of 
Antiochus to battle. 
MUSHROOMS. 
THE numerous kinds of Mushroom (Agarics, Boleti, etc.) which 
spring up around us, (and of which more than a hundred edible 
sorts are to be found), do not possess any special medicinal virtues 
except as regards two, or three; nor do those which come to 
table boast any greater food value than other ordinary fresh 
vegetable products. Indeed, in some respects they are inferior, 
and their very nature as saprophytes, or products of rotting 
vegetation, and decaying organic matter, stamps them as 
somewhat ignoble food. The popular belief that Mushrooms 
are highly nutritious—one kind being described as the vegetable 
beef-steak (Hepatica fistulina)—is more or less a delusion. As 
compared with meat, their supply of proteids, or flesh-formers, 
is very small. We have to tell the vegetarian he must consume 
at least ten pounds of Mushrooms in order to gain the equivalent 
of a little over one pound of prime beef. These fungi, however, 
furnish an unusual amount of potassium salts, which fact is 
much to their credit. As to the dry, solid constituents of 
Mushrooms, they differ very materially in kind from the superior 
solids of meat. With the juice of the Horse Mushroom (Agaricus 
arvensis) Catsup is made. This Catsup, or Ketchup (from the 
Japanese), is to be concocted thus: “Lightly bruise the 
Mushrooms, and strew over them a little salt; then boil with 
spices, and herbs, the juice which may be expressed after the 
Mushrooms thus treated with salt have stood for from twenty- 
four to forty-eight hours.” Sydney Smith, when a hard-working 
curate (1798) in the midst of Salisbury Plain, said he often 
dined on a mess of potatoes sprinkled with a little Catsup. — Once 
a week the butcher’s cart came over from Salisbury, and it was 
only then he could obtain any meat. 
For making Mushroom sauce: ‘‘ Wash, peel, and stalk enough 
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