Mushroom Catsup
The edible mushroom is the basis of the sauce called mushroom catsup; a great proportion of which is prepared by gardeners who grow the fungi. The mushrooms employed for preparing this sauce are generally those which are in a putrefactive state, and not having found a ready sale in the market; for no vegetable substance is liable to so rapid a spontaneous decomposition as mushrooms. In a few days after the fungus has been removed from the dung-bed on which it grows, it becomes the habitation of myriads of insects; and, if even the saleable mushroom be attentively examined, it will frequently be found to swarm with life.
Footnotes
114 Fungi plerique veneno turgent. Linn. Amæn. Acad.
115 Quæ voluptas tanta ancipitis cibi?—Plin. Nat. Hist. xxii. 23.
116 Sen. Ep. 95.