"Milk cap" is the everyday name for the milk mushrooms — the large genera Lactarius and their close relatives Lactifluus — the wild edibles that give up a drop of "milk" the moment their flesh is cut. Break a gill or nick the stalk and beads of latex well up at once: creamy white in most, but carrot-orange in the saffron milk caps, blood-red in a few, and turning grey, lilac or brown as it dries. Beyond the celebrated saffron milk cap of Mediterranean pine woods, the genus holds a whole tribe of prized foraging mushrooms — above all Lactifluus volemus, the weeping or fishy milk cap, which bleeds copious sweetish latex and carries a faint whiff of shellfish, and the peppery Lactarius deliciosus kin and the salt-cured "gruzdi" milk caps that anchor Russian and Eastern-European autumn tables. Their flesh is firm, often brittle and granular, snapping like chalk rather than tearing, and their flavours run from sweet and nutty to fiercely hot — which is why so many are salted, brined or par-boiled before they reach the plate rather than simply fried.