Apr 23 2007
St George’s mushrooms, a sublime taste of Spring
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St George’s Day and my thoughts turn inevitably to St George’s mushrooms. It’s the traditional start of the season for these chunky, creamy Spring fungi (Tricholama gambosum / Calocybe gambosa), which runs till the end of May.
The True Mushroom
St Georges may be less well known than ceps, girolles or morels, but they definitely rank amongst the finest wild mushrooms, with a firm texture, appealing mealy smell and distinctive flavour, reminiscent of soil and wood smoke. In France it’s known as le vrai mouserron, “the true mushroom”.
Cooking St George’s Mushrooms
They’ve an affinity with chicken and eggs, as well as those other seasonal Spring delicacies, asparagus and hop shoots. It’s hard to beat a simple but exquisite St George and asparagus omelette. (Or use them in just about any mushroom recipe.)
Where They Grow
St Georges grow in a wide variety of habitats, from woodland to pasture, but are particularly fond of chalk grassland. I’ve found them on sites as various as London’s Hyde Park, Salisbury Plain, Newmarket Heath and on Suffolk lawns and commons.
Picking St Georges amongst the cowslips on the grassy expanses of Salisbury Plain, with skylarks singing overhead, is for me the epitome of the English spring.
Besides their sublime flavour, St Georges have the great advantage of growing in quantity. They often form rings in grassland, the subterranean fungal body growing from a central point and sending up its fruiting bodies (the mushrooms that spread the spores) around the perimeter each year.
Rings can be of almost any size - I’ve seen them from a hand’s span to several dozen metres across. There are rumours of giant rings half a mile wide or more! A good sized ring can produce several kilos of mushrooms.
The rings - of yellowing and darker grass together - are often clearly visible from a distance and a helpful guide to the location of the mushrooms. Up close they can be completely hidden under long grass - as an Italian mushroom hunter once told me, you need eyes on the ends of your fingers to find them.
Identification
As with all wild mushrooms, be absolutely sure of a positive identification before eating anything. St Georges can be confused with poisonous varieties of Inocybe and Entolama fungi.
Roger Phillips’ classic Mushrooms
The Collins How to Identify Edible Mushrooms
Essential Reading
(This post is my entry for Weekend Herb Blogging #80, hosted by A Fridge Full of Food)
Nick, very interesting! Thanks so much for entering this in weekend herb blogging.
What a great looking wild mushroom. Isn’t it funny that some mushrooms aren’t rated as highly as others but are still good eating. Even the common field mushrooms (agaricus spp.) if wild and treated well are sublime. I never thought I might say I could be jealous of a Pom, but today I just might be.
Very interesting. I’ve never seen this type of mushroom before. I also didn’t know about the mushrooms growing in rings. Great post. I always love it when I learn something new!
I never came across these mushrooms, and Kalyn is right I´m too delighted to have learnt something new!!
I’m an avid (but not very skilled) mushroom picker but have only ever done it at the beginning of autumn. I keep promising myself to go to the woods to find some wild garlic, so I’ll keep my eyes peeled.
Hi, just picked my first lot for the season- yummy. I live next to a pub, and the ring is shared between my lawn and theirs. People stare at me when I water their side and then go over and pick the Mousserons (French name for St. g.) -
did you know their are supposed to be good for diabetics and lower blood sugar.