Mushrooms

Mushrooms have a variety of uses. They make delicious main-course dishes. They are also used for flavoring meat, fish and vegetables, for soups, for sauces—all in all, mushrooms are a very useful as well as a delicious food. They contain many elements of nutritive value and are rich in mineral salts.

No doubt they are as old as man. The Pharaohs of ancient Egypt knew and prized them as a food and believed they grew mysteriously, magically, over-night. In Greek mythology they are the "food of gods." The Roman poets sang of these dainty vegetables. The art of cultivating mushrooms originated in France in the 17th century, when the other arts flourished. The fame of their flavor grew, and the new art spread to England. From there it was brought to America by English gardeners who grew their mushrooms in greenhouses. Although it is only fifty years since this art was introduced to America, we have so improved these methods that with modern canning and cultivation, American housewives are supplied with these morsels the year round.