You guys are all eating my research! If you find mature, overripe specimens…would you mind sending them to me??
You can all resume eating them in a year from now when my thesis should be complete (wishful thinking)…

Cheers!

ive had subsculpta much more than other white puffballs and for some reason those tasted the best to me?

maybe their flavor varies on their habitat or other unknown hidden elements that they absorb?

> you mean that iodine flavor Curecat?

I don’t know… I’m not sure how iodine tastes. I don’t mind the flavour of iodized salt.

> I don’t get it in fresh, scrupulously white inside
> sculpta, but I do get it in subsculpta.

I have not tried Calbovista subsculpta. The only puffballs I have tried (and not liked) are in the genera Bovista and Calvatia.

> And to really taste a mushroom, it’s best to not
> adulterate it w/other flavors, at least for the
> first time. i just fried mine up in butter; mmmm,
> mmm good.

Butter has flavour!

I was attempting to convey that point.
However, I don’t consider small amount of onion/garlic or pepper to alter the flavour in any way that I can’t personally distinguish from the mushroom flavour itself. I guess it is a matter of training your palette to separate the different tastes out, ’cause I have definitely known people to say that a mushroom tastes like some other ingredient I mixed with it.

I know it is the flavour of the puffball mushroom itself that I do not like. One time I cooked 5 different kinds of mushrooms together (Hohenbuehelia petaloides, Agaricus sp., Clitocybe nuda, Marasmius oreades, Bovista sp.), and I liked every species except for the Bovista sp., which after one bite I removed all the pieces of and continued to eat the other 4 mushrooms. The Fairy Rings and Leaf Oysters were my favourite.

I don’t get it in fresh, scrupulously white inside sculpta, but I do get it in subsculpta. And to really taste a mushroom, it’s best to not adulterate it w/other flavors, at least for the first time. i just fried mine up in butter; mmmm, mmm good.

When trying an edible for the first time I try and cook each species the same way to get a taste for the mushroom and gauge what flavours might mix well next time. I usually saute thin slices of the mushroom in butter with a little bit of onion and garlic, salt and pepper, then let it cook a good while so the mushrooms get crispy and browned and then maybe deglaze with a splash of beer. I followed this method for the puffballs I’ve tried. It’s a particular flavour that I just don’t like. I can smell it in the raw mushroom too, and it persists even after cooking.

Like I said, everyone else liked it!

btw – your method DOES sound delicious… but I would substitute the C. sculpta for another edible.

how did you cook your puffballs?
I sliced mine into 1/4" thick slices, marinated in buffalo stew, then beer battered them with some dandelion flowers.

These were all over the place in an open meadow in the Northern Oregon mountains last Summer. I cooked some up and didn’t like them at all. I find the flavour of all puffballs (that I have tried thus far) to be off putting. Although everyone else who tried them really liked them!

Cool looking in any case!
The over mature ones are AWESOME for throwing at trees and rocks.

I agree with deb, the edible calvatia are AWESOMELY DELICIOUS