The gills are pinky red changing to liver colour; salt them and read the result.
Mushrooms are very rare in this country. It is very important to be able to distinguish those which are wholesome from the poisonous. The gills of the mushroom are of a pinky red, changing to liver color; the flesh is white, the stem white, solid and cylindrical. In order to test mushrooms, sprinkle salt on the gills, if they turn yellow they are poisonous; if they turn black they are good.
The 20th Century Home Cook Book, 1906. Public domain; transcription unaltered.
This is the third version of the salt test in our corpus, and the repetition across separate books is the point: it looked like established knowledge because everybody printed it.
It identifies nothing. Nor does the appearance test alongside it — pinky-red gills darkening to liver colour describes the field mushroom and a number of things that are not the field mushroom.
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Read the original page →Marrow from “animals, freshly killed,” administered to bloodless patients “to stimulate their fresh blood formation.” The logic is that marrow makes blood, so eat marrow.
Meals Medicinal · 1905
Meat going off? Suspend it over a bowl of salt, add two ounces of sulphuric acid by degrees, and let the fumes work. “Care must be taken not to breathe them.”
Household Discoveries and Mrs. Curtis's Cook Book · 1914
Chop the pickle into ammonia and watch for deep blue — proof it was “cooked in brass or copper kettles.” A routine kitchen test, because it happened constantly.
Household Discoveries and Mrs. Curtis's Cook Book · 1914