Weddings are catch as catch can. Furlough today, altar-bound tomorrow. Lohengrin, Champagne, and sandwiches, and the wedding is legal. Reception of double-refined simplicity replace the pretentious wedding feasts of yesterday. But who will fix the sandwiches in this last-minute hurry? Who can brew a potent punch? Who can bake a fine cake? Page caterer Nata Lee, 1046 Madison Avenue. Her prices are reasonable, her fare is exquisite, her ideas unique.
Brides, like ships, should be launched with Champagne. The domestic brands are doing dandy. There is fresh Russian caviar, sold by Wynne & Treanor, 712 Madison Avenue, price ＄20 a pound. There is a smoked mountain trout pâté waiting at Bellow's Gourmets' Bazaar, 67 East Fifty-second. Smoked turkey is around; and domestic pâtés by the dozens, made with the livers of the unrationed hen.
Ice, not ice cream, is the patriotic wedding dessert. Ice cream love birds have flown for the duration. Ice cream wedding bells are silenced until after V-Day. The government keeps its thumbs down on such fancy doings.
The best-dressed wedding cakes are wearing fresh flowers, a sugar-saving idea of Madame Georgette de Malvelain, world-famous stylist of the cakes of Hymen.
What Madame Georgette does, all cakedom will be doing, for she is the acknowledged wedding cake queen of the nation. Her crown was inherited direct from her mother, the laic Madame Blanche Le Rallec, who built the House of Blanche at 243 East Fifty-seventh Street, with the Black Douglas fruit cake as its firm foundation. That fruit cake is three-quarters fruit and heady with brandy, its recipe a hand-down from the Thirteenth Century, belonging originally to the Black Douglas of Scotland. A worthy cake, but its fame came from its top decoration. Cakes of this house are designed by blueprint method, thus combining the technical skill of the architect with the gastronomic art of the chef.
This Black Douglas cake has gone to more society weddings than any other cake in the world. It has been cut by Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Carnegies, Morgans. It has been served at the weddings of three presidents' daughters. Today the dark fruit cake is reserved to fill the favor boxes, while the flaky white lady cake is prepared for the bride's table. This white pound-cake type was introduced first in 1920, a revival of the wedding cakes used by the belles in the Colonial era.
Madame Georgette cuts her wartime wedding cakes to junior miss sizes—one tier, two tiers. A one-tier cake may be given a two-tier effect with a just-pretend base containing a grab-bag trick. A cardboard box is used for the foundation, the sides partially cut away, then rebuilt with frosting. The interior holds the wedding cake souvenirs, long ribbons tied to each, these extended through the frosting to each guest's place. After the cake culling ceremony, pull out the favors.
If your heart is set on a three-tier cake, Madame Georgette suggests still another thrift trick. Let the first tier be the bride's cake to be cut at the wedding. Second tier, the dark fruit cake to be put away for anniversary celebrations. The small top tier will be a light fruit cake to be kept for the first christening.
The Black Douglas cake is ＄1.50 a pound, the same price today as when the business was new forty years ago this June. And that price, mind you, includes the decoration. The light fruit cake made with blonde fruits is ＄2 a pound; the white lady cake for the bride's table, ＄1.25. Cakes are available in any size wanted from five pounds to a ton.
Schnozzler news regards a new all-purpose mixer, called the “Zombie,” apparently the coefficient of all quenchiosity, for it can be used in 101 drinks, to quote from the label. But it does its best in a Zombie. The adventurous may prefer it in a Mexican Hayride (recipe on the label), this calling for Tequila, or in other words, dynamite. The mix is a combination of sweetened tropical fruit juices, enhanced with imitation flavors and a touch of citric acid. Pint bottles are retailing for 82 cents at B. Altman and Company, Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fourth.
Salad can be dressed in a hurry and well dressed if you have a packet of the new powdered “French Mix” handy. Oil and vinegar, that's what you add to an ounce of orange powder. What's in the mix? Mustard, salt, sugar, and spices, all blended to an epicure's pleasure. Just enough seasoning is in there to make one pint of French dressing by the addition of one-half cup of vinegar and one-and-a-half cups of salad oil. Add a teaspoon of Worcestershire for a more spicy dressing. Add a tablespoon of chopped pickle for sauce vinaigrette. The mix makes a perfect dressing for those who haven't the patience to measure out seasonings. A mail order buy, 25 cents for a package, or four for ＄1, from R. W. Knapp, 4600 McPherson, St. Louis, Mo.
Dorset's new ham a la King is a product of pleasing personality. The sauce shades to brown, for it's made with a meat broth combined with milk and cream. There are chewy little matters for the teeth to touch—bits of mushroom, green peppers, peas, and pimientos. A generous hand tossed in the ham. Sherry is in the blending, but scarcely detectable—yet the secret, no doubt, of the subtle blending of the flavors.
A surprise stuffing for a pepper, it is thick enough as it is to use for a filler. Used à la King, the mixture needs thin-Ning—a flavorsome sauce to spoon over corn bread, to fill up the crack of a steaming baked potato. Blend it through a casserole of freshly cooked macaroni. Cover the whole with thin slices of fresh tomato, season to taste, sprinkle with buttered crumbs, and bake for thirty minutes in a moderate oven. The product is packed in 11½ ounce jars, 55 cents and only one point, at Hammacher Schlemmer's, 145 East Fifty-seventh.
“Honi-Spread” is the “hock and Sherry of the bees,” drawn from the clover, beaten to an eating consistency, smooth as butler, as easy-spreading. It is a non-drip spread, 100 per cent honey, packed by Finger lakes Honey Producers' Cooperative of Groton, N. Y. It is pure honey, nothing added, nothing taken away, crystallized from the liquid to a solid state by a new process developed in the laboratories of Cornell University. Since the crystals of the spread are microscopically small, it has a creamy smoothness not found in the ordinary granulated variety. Bell-Bates Company of 44 Dey Street offers the honey for 29 Cents a pound, several cents under the prices in stores uptown.
Granddad started it over thirty years ago. His son and his son's sons continue With his original formula, turning out the corned rounds, the corned briskets, the corned navels, the corned spareribs. And the sons and the grandsons of Grandfather Joseph's customers of the Wall Street district still buy most of their corned beef at this venerable firm in Washington Market. Better corned beef is not to be found in this city.
The corning is done in the old-fashioned manner; that is, the meal is given time in the curing tanks to drink in the brine, just as much as enough. This enough gives a water content of around 5 to 6 per cent in comparison with the 8 to 10 per cent water usually present in meat cured by the pumping system. In Use newer process, the pickling brine is injected into the meat. Speed is the big idea, as this method takes but six to ten days, while the let-it-soak style requires from two to three weeks.
Corned meal prices are at the ceiling: brisket, 35 cents a pound; navel, 22 cents; the corned rounds, boneless, 47 cents.
Visiting in Washington Market, slip around to A. Schur's stand for a pound of peanut butter, 35 cents, made with freshly roasted nuts and ground while you wait. Freshly ground cashew butter is 95 cents a pound—and worth the extra money. Spanish salted almonds are stocked, the jumbo size, ＄1.59 a pound. Match that price if you can. Or these: mixed salted nuts (without peanuts), ＄1.29 a pound; jumbo salted pecans, ＄1.20; salted peanuts, big fellows, 39 cents. Nuts are roasted daily—there's never a stale bite.
New quick-frozen, ready-to-eat foods come in never-ending procession. Quick-frozen applesauce is new on the Birds Eye list. Thaw and heat to use over gingerbread in place of whipped cream. Leave it partially frozen, but soft enough to spoon up and serve as a sherbet-like relish with pork. Serve it as a breakfast fruit, either by itself or to tip-top a hot cereal. Spread it over crisp waffles or French toast or a pancake. Flavor with mint and tint a pale green to serve with the lamb.
Cod comes to town in a quick-frozen mixture of codfish and potatoes ready to thaw and pat into cakes, or dip into balls to fry flaky and tender. These codfish cakes (Birds Eye again) are not cakes, but one block, solid as a rock until thawed. Thawing is a ten-hour job if done in the food compartment of the refrigerator. If the mixture is removed from the carton and left at room temperature, it can be handled in three hours. Once it is thawed, use it immediately for best results, and don't attempt to refreeze. The 12-ounce package is sufficient to mold eight medium-sized cakes, and sells for about 31 cents.
The parade is only starting. Now Pratt's Fresh Frosted Foods Company has announced a long list of “readymades”: Creole style spaghetti—excellent; baked Lima beans in tomato sauce, codfish cakes, corned beef hash, Spanish rice. New as this month is chow mein, the real Chinese kind. And don't miss the health salad of thinly slivered cabbage combined with onions, carrots, and green pepper, with a French-type dressing for the blending. These foods are handled in the New York area by Esposito's, 444 Sixth Avenue, and London Terrace Super Market, Ninth Avenue and 23rd Street.