It’s easy to see the fungiphobe’s viewpoint. Even as someone who finds every edible mushroom a joy to cook and eat, I can understand how some might not. There’s their habit of growing on rotting logs or in manure, their dodgy relatives — mould and kin — and most unnervingly, the way they won’t fit into an animal, vegetable, mineral game.
Actually, this last one isn’t strictly true: while we know mushrooms aren’t plants, having no chloroplasts in sight, phylogeneticists tell us that if we have to choose one category for them, it’s animal. This is according to taxonomy based on evolutionary links rather than straight-up traits. Fungi and animals form a clade (a group with a common ancestor) called opisthokonta, named after a particular flagellum present in our last shared progenitor. Today, the US department for microbiology tells us, the descendant of this flagellum propels primitive fungal spores and animal sperm alike. We’re related!
We might happily welcome our great-uncle porcini, but as the fungiphobes will point out, there’s still the matter of poisoning. I’d argue that’s no longer an issue if you aren’t hunting down your own feral fungi, but it is interesting that our species kept throwing mushrooms down our gullets before the arrival of antiseptic farmed versions.
Why do it?
There’s only one possible explanation: umami. If you’re alive and cooking in 2023, you need no introduction to this now-official fifth taste. We know it gives us deep meaty flavour, that the word means "essence of deliciousness" and that its presence gives menus extra cred. What many don’t know is that the molecule largely responsible for activating the "deliciousness" in umami-rich foods — glutamic acid — is the same glutamic acid behind the G in MSG. You love umami? What you love is MSG. And that’s fine. Monosodium glutamate (made through a benign fermentation process) has a bad rap, but some nutritionists and food technologists surmise that reported side effects could be due to MSG often being present in foods which contain sulphite preservatives or are deep-fried in toxic seed oils.
At any rate, MSG seasoning represents a minute fraction of the glutamate our bodies make all the time. Not that it increases glutamate, but it's good to know how to create umami magnification in fungi. Unlike sweet or sour, it seems there can never be such a thing as too much umami. The general rule is that it will be more pronounced when mushrooms are cooked and most pronounced when they are also browned. If you create an umami bomb — mushrooms sautéed to a crispy brown in butter (more umami), garlic (yet more umami) and topped with an aged cheese (really high umami!) — you might even win over the fungiphobes.
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