Orange!

Got to love them

Saffron milk caps are one of my long-time favourites. Their Latin name is most appropriate: Lactarius deliciosus. Some mushroom hunters believe that there is no finer mushroom on this planet, and I tend to agree. The combination of strong taste, firm texture and vivid orange colour of both raw and cooked mushrooms is second to none.

Ceps, the universally recognised mushroom royalty, have just one advantage over saffron milk caps: the former are equally good fresh, frozen and dried, and keep in the fridge for at least a week, whereas the latter start turning into greenish goo after just a few hours. The only possibility of preservation is to pickle them. There are some fans of this method, but to me the result looks (and tastes!) like brown slugs.

A word of warning: there is one lookalike poisonous species in temperate forests. Its distinction from the true saffron milk cap is that it grows under birch and has white milky sap (the original's is bright orange) and wooly edge under its cap.

Russian field guides maintain that wooly milk cap is edible if pickled, but even they admit that if one makes its way into a frying pan, the result would be a massive culinary disaster.

The two mushroom species do look very similar though, and this must be the reason why all saffron milk caps in Scottish forests are mine. As long as I get to them before the maggots...

Image credit:
Lactarius deliciosus