Category: fungi

I’ve talked about foraging for wild mushrooms and cooking supposedly non edible varieties but this case involving a lady called Erin Patterson who poisoned her guests, three of whom died, is fascinating.

You see, she cooked with Death Cap mushrooms or Amanita Phalloides. The Amanitas are pretty much on page one of the amateur foraging guide “do not fuck with anything with white gills unless you really know what you’re doing”.

Anyway, could have been innocent if unfortunate mistake.

But I want to speak specifically about the beef wellingtons because as a top tier professional chef it really gets interesting from a CSI Miami perspective. Let me explain:

The scenario is odd to me because she cooked individually portioned beef wellingtons and not one big one like Gordon Ramsey would:

A. Let’s assume she didn’t intend to poison anyone and used a large beef wellington. In this scenario she would likely have been poisoned herself, unless she inexplicably, and by sheer luck, portioned the poisoned mushrooms in parts of the wellington she gave to her guests and her portion was safe and uncontaminated. Herm….

B. Let’s assume she didn’t intend to poison her guests but decided to cook individual portions and by sheer luck hers contained no poisonous mushrooms. Phew!

C. Let’s assume she intended to poison her guests but used a single portion wellington. Well, now, this is risky because she’d have to ensure none of the poison section was served to herself and no contamination occurred. And also rely on her guests not asking for a specific bit of the food “I’ll have a bit off the end please!”, but meh, she could have served up portions in the kitchen and avoided this scenario, but it’s still risky as hell.

D. Let’s assume she wanted to poison her guests but served individual portions. Well, this makes perfect sense as it allows Erin to control who gets what an ensures she won’t get poisoned. Especially if you serve your own on a special plate (she did).

So, all are possible but some are more possible than others and I’ll let you make up your own mind. To me she’s either very very dumb and very very lucky or guilty as all hell. Let me know in the comments!

Update