Eating Russula compacta for the First Time
About 3½ hours ago, I cooked and ate a Russula compacta mushroom of about the same size as one of the white button mushrooms one might purchase at a supermarket. I'm happy to report that it is, indeed, an edible mushroom. I have not experienced gastric distress nor have I had any of the symptoms that one would expect from an allergic reaction. I've never tried eating R. compacta before today.
That being said, one might ask if it's worth eating. Yes and no. The consistency is a little more solid than domesticated Agaricus, and I think that's a plus. The taste is fairly non-existent, though. There's really not much to it. I could see using it as an ingredient in a dish for texture but it's not going to add anything to the flavor. There are certainly far better edibles. I might consider eating more of them if I didn't find anything more worthwhile, but I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to gather them, cart them home and clean them. I'd give them a four on a scale of ten.
I still have a few left, though, so I'll use those up tonight when I make dinner. It's either that or throw them away and I don't like the idea of killing something and having it go to waste, even if it's just a common and expendable fruiting body. Some fungus went to a lot of trouble to build that mushroom.
