Agaricus bisporus

Agaricus bisporus is known by many names, such as the Common mushroom, button mushroom, white mushroom, brown mushroom, table mushroom, crimini, champignon, Italian mushroom, Portabello, etc. In the wild, A. bisporus is a shiny tan mushroom, and is considered excellent eating

The Common Mushroom is the most popularly consumed mushroom in the world due directly to it being the most commonly cultivated mushroom in the world. The oldest records of cultivation date back to 1707 in a description by French botanist, Joseph Pitton de Tournefort. By 1893, the Pasteur Institute in Paris discovered and began marketing purified/sterilized spawn to mushroom growers. In 1926, a Pennsylvanian mushroom farmer discovered a clump of white-capped mutants in his bed, and began propagating the blanched mutants to the point where almost all supermarket mushrooms are descendants of this farmer’s mutants.

In Western cuisine, the common mushroom is a ubiquitous vegetable that is used raw in salads, and cooked in a myriad of ways, baked, sautéed, roasted with meat, or added to thousands of different soups. Although the common mushroom is a recent addition to China, it readily inserts itself into Chinese cuisine, either as another vegetable to sauté, or as a substitute for virtually any Asian mushroom except for the Enoki or Lingzhi.

In older times, the common mushroom, and its close relative, the field mushroom, A. campestris, were used in Western Herbalism to make poultices for painful, ulcerated tonsils, referred to as a “quinsey.” In Chinese food therapy, the common mushroom is a nourishing multi-functional medicinal food that can resolve phlegm, help calm emotional turmoil and clear heat and inflammation from the body.