First basket: chanterelles, a false one, and what came home
October 26, 2024 · 3 min read
My first proper basket, three autumns ago, was chanterelles from a mossy slope under birch and oak, and it very nearly included something that was not a chanterelle. I want to record both halves of that morning because the second half is the one I learned from.
The chanterelles themselves were egg-yolk yellow, with a cap that was flat and then slightly funnelled, and a wavy edge that looked like it had been pinched by hand. Turning one over was the decisive moment. There were no true gills, just blunt, shallow ridges that forked and ran down into the stem without a clear line between the two. When I cut one lengthwise the flesh was pale, almost white, and firm all the way through, and the smell was unmistakably of apricots. All of that matched both of my books, feature by feature, and I put eleven of them into a paper bag.
Fifty metres on, in a damp hollow full of pine needles and rotting branches, there were more orange mushrooms, and I almost just added them to the bag. Something about the colour stopped me: it was more orange than yellow, and the caps were thinner and more regular. Underneath, the difference was obvious once I looked. These had real gills, thin and crowded and forked but clearly separate blades, and they were growing out of decayed wood rather than from the soil. The flesh was orange when cut, not pale. This was the false chanterelle, which is not a killer but is not something I want to eat either, and more to the point it was proof that my eyes alone were not enough. They went in a separate bag for photographs and then into the compost.
At home I did spore prints anyway (both pale, which did not separate them and taught me that some checks are useless for some pairs), cleaned the true ones with a brush, and cooked about 150 grams in butter for six or seven minutes until the liquid had gone. I ate a small plate with scrambled eggs, then waited until the next evening for the rest. The flavour is mild and slightly peppery with that apricot note still there, and the texture stays firm in a way cultivated mushrooms do not.
The lesson from that first basket has shaped everything since: every patch is a new identification, even if it is ten paces from the last one, and the underside of the cap tells you more than the top ever will.