Haute Cuisine: Iconoclastic Composer and Mushroom Expert John Cage’s Recipes from the Pages of <i>Vogue</i> — vogue.com

In relative terms, this is the Survivor installment of Ninette Lyon’s “Second Fame” food series for Vogue. In 1965 the journalist traveled to Stony Point, New York, to meet the avant-garde composer John Cage, who believed, “A work of art must never be a caress. If it no longer irritates, it no longer is art.” An epicurean to boot, Cage was as rebellious in the kitchen as he was on the piano, substituting homemade wild grape jelly (the recipe for which is below) for the traditional cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving. He served Lyon a salad of fresh watercress picked by a brook with mushroom “dogsup,” his version of ketchup. Obsessed with fungi, Cage, who won an Italian TV contest on mushrooms and revived the New York Mycological Society, explained the origins of his obsession, telling Lyon: “During the Depression, in California, I had no money. I was living in Carmel and around my shack grew mushrooms, I decided they were edible and lived on them.”

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