“Who are you?” asks a caterpillar smoking a hookah pipe atop a towering mushroom. In this moment, Alice does not know.

In the classic 1865 story Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, Alice comes across an almighty fly agaric along her travels, a mushroom known for its potent psychoactive properties, which allows her to control her own height by consuming small pieces from either side of the fungus. And just as the caterpillar questions the girl, we often wonder something similar of the mysterious, fascinating, and quietly radical crop itself.

Available this spring via TASCHEN is The Gourmand’s Mushroom: A Collection of Stories & Recipes. A product of David Lane and Marina Tweed’s eponymous food and culture journal The Gourmand, the book explores the mushroom across all of its profiles: as food, art, medicine, and a gateway to some divine underworld. It’s one of those things that seems so unadorned and unassuming, yet shows up everywhere without eliciting a second thought. The mushroom: the cultural symbol. The mushroom: the passing wonder.

The book features a collection of essays illustrating the fungi’s expansive repertoire, from toxicology and space travel to avant-garde fashion, fairies, and the troubled life of Beatrix Potter. Faithful to the pith of The Gourmand’s mind, inquisitive essays and chic photographs are accompanied by over 40 original recipes utilizing the mushroom in appetizers, main courses, shareables, and more—from mushroom pâté to wild mushroom and herb ravioli to mushroom tempura.

So who is the mushroom? A polymath; a Renaissance man. A magical crop of whimsy and mystique. A muse of art and vessel for healing. The secret ingredient in your lasagne that everyone loves at the dinner party. The Gourmand’s Mushroom: A Collection of Stories & Recipes doesn’t leave any stone unturned. It affirms the mycological mystery sprouting from the forest floor, woven together by science, cultural conversation, sacrament, and the trained eye. But perhaps the mystery is the point. The mushroom need not declare itself. It stands, quiet and unassuming, content to be symbol and spectacle all at once.