From Dung to Food: Mushroom Cultivation in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Abstract This article traces the rise of the French art of raising mushrooms in beds, its introduction to Britain and its subsequent evolution in the eighteenth century. This outcome of Anglo-French agrotechnological interaction, exemplifying the dynamic exploration and exchange of edibles occurring in early modern Europe, laid the foundation for the present-day British mushroom industry. During the early decades of the eighteenth century, mushrooms were being cultivated after the French manner and sold on the London market. The biologist Richard Bradley, among others, played an active part in the early promotion of mushroom production. Despite the French origin of this practice, British producers adapted it and developed production for the domestic market. Spurred by gastronomical and economic interests, the markets for both mushrooms and mushroom spawn were well-established around London by the late eighteenth century. This new trend in British economic and material life interplayed with the print landscape of gardening, occasioning the first English treatise devoted to the raising of mushrooms. Mushroom production also provided a new opportunity for transforming horse dung, a troublesome waste product in cities, into a useful substance in the service of food and commerce. The production activity evolved as an empirical art with technical means of translation and innovation, while intersecting with European natural history. In a general sense, it fitted into British and European endeavours to tame the natural world.