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FORAGER | CHEF

Award-winning chef, author and forager Alan Bergo. Food is all around you.

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Fungorum: an Old Book of Mushrooms

Fungorum a book of mushrooms_-11

fungorum, battara, ancient bookAll my life I’ve been a collector of artifacts and old things. When I was a child, I collected rocks, fossils, and arrowheads that would be dredged up on our farm. As an adolescent I loved Medieval themed things like goblets, swords, ceramics and stuff made out of wood. As you can imagine, when I discovered what a thrift store was in my twenties I quickly filled my apartment full of useless crap. What I hoard, er, collect throughout the years has evolves, but one thing has been constant: books.

Our word Bolete is derived from the Latin boleti, or "special mushrooms".

Our word Bolete is derived from the Latin boleti, or “special mushroom”.

Out of the thousand or so books I’ve owned (I try to keep it to a couple hundred now) there’s one that I treasure over all the others, not surprisingly it’s a book about mushrooms. If mushroom cooking is wizardry, then it’s my most precious spellbook, a portal to ancient theories and secrets.

Fungorum a book of mushrooms_

Story goes that my aunt’s family has lived in New England for generations, and in the attic of a house owned by a family member they discovered a few books, one being a 250 year old relic written in Latin, a second edition of Fungorum Agri Ariminensis Historia, by Antonio Giovanni Battara. The book traveled through her family for a number of years, and eventually, found it’s way to me as one of the most thoughtful gifts I’ve ever received.

chanterelles

Chanterelles and friends

Battara, from the accounts I can find was a renaissance man, naturalist, physician, student of the arts of philosphy and geometry, as well as an ordained priest, and mycologist. He lived in what is now Italy’s Emilia Romagna region, famous for other things I love to enjoy like parmigiano, bolognese sauce, prosciutto and mortadella.

amanita fungorum

Amanitacae

Most of all though, Battara was a mushroom hunter like me, but interestingly enough he wasn’t a mycophagist, or mushroom eater. My favorite page of the book is in the beginning, there’s a picture of a lynx and a banner surrounding a fungal research motto in greek that reads:

“We study mushrooms, we do not eat them”

Fungorum a book of mushrooms_-2

“we study mushrooms, we do not eat them”

Battara was a student of nature, where I want to find mushrooms I can eat, which can obscure other species. He wanted to catalog, to understand, to document, especially the individual anatomical features of individual fungi. Following that, the most fantastic part of the book is all about the fungal features, shown in engravings that Battara carved himself into copper that was pressed into ink for printing.

The engravings are excellent. I still have trouble drawing stick figures.

250 years ago puffballs still looked like puffballs.

Let me just repeat that to let it sink in: 250 years ago this mycologist/priest/professor guy hand-carved over 250 different species of mushrooms into copper plates for the sake of research, and he did it in a time when mushrooms were feared, unclean characters of death and devilry.

Flipping the page over you can see the engraving marks on the paper from where the copper press marked it.

Flipping the page over you can see the engraving marks on the paper from where the hand-engraved copper plate marked it.

During Battara’s time, it was generally held that mushrooms spontaneously generated, but he came up with a theory that differed. He proposed that mushrooms didn’t spontaneously generate, but were spread by the putrified juice that mushrooms exude as they decompose, not far from the truth when you consider that spores can fall into water and be travel to a substrate to spread.

ascomycete mushrooms,

Some of Batarra’s groupings were not far off from what we have today, like these Ascomycetes or members of “Morels and friends”. Note the goo on the stinkhorn.

In the end, his work seems to have been well received, as a number of species names are dedicated to him, and a number of editions of the book were published. There’s a few online for sale I’ve seen, ranging from 2500-7500$ depending on the edition and condition.

Thankfully, some genius(es) in our technological age have found ways to use digitization for more than hunting pokemon, spam marketing and brownie/cake recipes. I stumbled on an online version, so now if you’d like you can have a copy of my favorite book too, albeit a digital one, the engravings (pictures) start on page 81.fungorum agri arimensis historia

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Marc

    December 2, 2017 at 9:48 am

    Looks like a stunning and very interesting tome.

    Reply
  2. Maddy

    December 2, 2017 at 10:15 am

    I believe forgers probably started out
    (Myself) looking down for rocks, fossils, etc. I as child I collected many things, fortunately this turned into many collections, that went from one thing to another.
    I am the only Nature loving, schooling
    myself one in my family(DNA) from
    A very long ago Relative.
    Thanks for sharing the very old Mushroom book info.
    Made my day.
    Maddy????????????????????????????????

    Reply
  3. Steve Pendergast

    December 3, 2017 at 6:46 am

    Facebook and the prognosis even better! Thanks for sharing your story

    Reply
  4. Steve Pendergast

    December 3, 2017 at 6:49 am

    Fascinating book and the provenance is even better! Thanks for sharing its story

    Reply
  5. Phyllis Bergo

    December 4, 2017 at 9:38 pm

    How wonderful a gift!

    Reply
  6. Alvaro

    December 13, 2017 at 4:19 am

    This book is awesome!

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. The Wild Harvest Episode 3: Early Summer says:
    June 25, 2020 at 3:33 pm

    […] the whole wide world is a literal artifact–a 250 year old book on mushrooms in Italian called Fungorum Agri Arimensis Historium. The 2nd edition tome is in the original Latin, and, although it’s […]

    Reply

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FORAGER | CHEF®
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Author: The Forager Chef’s Book of Flora
James Beard Award ‘22
Host: Field Forest Feast 👇
streaming on @tastemade

Alan Bergo
Sometimes I forget we have good traditions in Amer Sometimes I forget we have good traditions in America too. Case in point: bourbon. 

TIL about American traditions, and the role of the white oak in aging. Tasted some of that sweet nectar too. 

The rye finished in rum barrels smells like pure maple syrup 🤤. @angelsenvy

#bourbon #whiskeyrow #angelsenvy #whiteoak
Summer veg PSA: One of the edible plant parts I co Summer veg PSA: One of the edible plant parts I cover in my book you might not know are squash and pumpkin shoots. 

Tender and delicious, these are eaten around the world. The US is still coming around, but I see them occasionally at farmers markets. 

I like to give them a dip in boiling water to wilt them quick, then toss them with some fat or stir-fry them quick. The little curly-cues make them look like fairy tale veggies to me. 

#squashshoots #cucurbitaceae #eatmoreplants #kehoecarboncookware
Shaved cattail rhizomes with smoked trout, chickwe Shaved cattail rhizomes with smoked trout, chickweed, lemon, hickory nut oil and tarragon from the @wild.fed shoot. 

I spent a couple days trying to cook the rhizomes, and it works, but raw is my favorite prep. 

I add some smoked trout both for the salty pop and because it’s fun to mix aquatic edibles. Runner bean flowers for a splash of color. 

#cattails #foraging #chickweed #runnerbeans #saladsofinstagram
Long, fun day snatching crayfish out of the water Long, fun day snatching crayfish out of the water by hand with Sam Thayer and @danielvitalis for @wild.fed 

Daniel and Sam were the apex predators, but I got a few. 

Without a net catching crayfish by hand is definitely a wax-on wax-off sort of skill. Clears your mind. 

They’re going into gumbo with porcini, sausage and milkweed pods today. 

#crayfish #ninjareflexes #waxonwaxoff #normalthings #onset🎥🎬
Working all day on preps for cattail lateral rhizo Working all day on preps for cattail lateral rhizomes and blueberries for this weeks shoot with @wildfed 

Been a few years since I worked with these. Thankfully Sam Thayer dropped a couple off for me to work with. They’re tender, crisp and delicious. 

Sam mentioned their mild flavor and texture could be because they don’t have to worry about predators eating them, since they grow in the muck of cattail marshes. 

I think they could use a pet name. Pond tusk? Swamp spears? Help me out here. 😂

Nature makes the coolest things. 

#itcamefromthepond #cattail #rhizomes #foraging #typhalatifolia
I liked the staff meal I made for Mondays shoot so I liked the staff meal I made for Mondays shoot so much we filmed it instead of the original dish I’d planned. 

Cooked natural wild rice (not the black shiny stuff) is great hot, cold, sweet or savory. It’s a perfect, filling lunch for a long day of berry picking. 

I make them with whatever I have on hand. Mushrooms will fade into the background a little here, so I use a bunch of them, along with lots of herbs and hickory nut oil + dill flowers. 

I’m eating the leftovers today back up in the barrens (hopefully) getting some more bluebs for another shoot this week w @wild.fed 

#wilwilwice #wildrice #chanterelles #campfood #castironcooking
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