In the days before the Stuka and the Blitz, European countries supplied our varied line of fancy dessert sauces. Prewar stocks have dwindled, a few domestic firms have produced so-so syrups, but nothing exciting—not until now. This fall three new sauces appear, typically European—Dutch as to recipe. Read the labels, please, and be pleasantly surprised for a rich variety of reasons. But one thing is amazing, for the first time ever, here is a dessert sauce claiming a content of 12 per cent alcohol.
The maker is that young chemist, Henry Reichman, who five years ago started a food laboratory, the Homex Products, Inc., to astonish the market with his novelty inventions. A mix-your-own cola elixir came first, still selling. Then along came “Spar Kooler,” which Macy's sells exclusively, by the thousands of cases. “Tis” eggnog you have known for two seasons, but it's off the market now until the war's ending, since all eggnog manufacturing has been stopped by the government for the duration. Looking over the needs of the food field, young Reichman noted dessert sauces as missing, and started research about a year ago to produce the new trio.
Sauce kinds are crème de apricot, crème de cocoa, with crème de cherry the queen. The cherry has the real fresh cherry perfume. Sour cherries from Oregon give their goodness to the brew —not just the juice but the whole fruit, hydraulic pressed, pit and all for that bitter-tanged edge. Sugar is added to the cherry, and other natural flavorings to temper the sourness. Citric acid is there to give the right zing. Alcohol goes in, to 12 per cent of the volume. Before the bottling comes a two months' period of aging in wooden tanks hermetically sealed.
Apricot sauce is produced in like manner, but no pits in this. It takes one pound of the fruit for a twenty-five-ounce bottle of syrup—no wonder there's strength to that apricot flavor. Crème de cocoa is made with Brazilian cocoa of good quality, plus an alcoholic extract added with cocoa's friend vanilla. Then follows the aging.
Here are syrups with uses unending —a dessert sauce for puddings, ice cream, or cake, to pour direct from the bottle, or serve hot after a few minutes of double-boiler heating. Use the sauce as flavoring in desserts, as well as over them. Try three tablespoons of the cherry syrup as an addition to replace that much of the liquid in your next batch of Frizz. It's a titivating ingredient to give color and flavor and alcoholic delectation to the pie called chiffon.
The sauces are available in three sizes of bottles: six-ounce 69 cents, twelve-ounce ＄1.25, twenty-five-ounce ＄2.28, at Hammacher Schlemmer, 145 East 57th, B. Altman & Co., Fifth Avenue and 34th, R.H. Macy & Co., Broadway and 34th, L. Bamberger in Newark, and in Brooklyn at Abraham and Straus. Notice the lacy lable—that's reproduction of a piece of Chantilly lace. Chantilly, the trade name, is borrowed from the French, but the sauces are Dutch!
That ethereal puff, the popover, has been ready-mix mastered, the handiwork of a man. New cooks need no longer shy away from those tall hot breads “all air in the middle,” The new ready-mix, “Puff-Over” by name, gives a pop-over that pops up and stays up every time. Truth is, popovers take no extraordinary sort of skill despite their spectacular appearance, but women think they do. They're an easy luxury composed of nothing but expanding steam and the stretching qualities of gluten and egg and the ability of heat to set the bubble into a great golden puff.
But for the timid. Puff-Over is the foolproof answer. Just and milk, one part to one part powder, add it slowly, beating in a big way until the batter comes smooth. Use the regular muffin tins, grease well, then place in the oven five minutes before filling the cups two-thirds full. Bake in a very hot oven for about twenty minutes until the bread sets, then reduce the temperature to moderate and bake for fifteen minuted more until the bread dries. The label directions call for a lower temperature and shorter baking time. But best luck in our kitchen resulted when we followed regular popover baking rules. The five-ounce box, 41 cents, holds two cups of powder and will make twelve big popovers, light and tender. Sold by B. Altman & Co., 5th Avenue and 34th.
Food buyer S. J. Held of Bellows' Food Bazaar, 67 East 52nd, set up a round of Old-fashioneds for our pleasure, and more particularly to show off the glory of his newest acquisition, a jar of cocktail orange slices. These are cut from the fresh fruit and are fresh tastings, packed in heavy syrup, twelve ounces, 40 cents.
Sauterne mushrooms for the hors d'oeuvre table are an item returned to the Food Bazaar. Button mushrooms are pickled in a spiced sauce of wine and wine vinegar, with the ghost of opinion lurking around somewhere. Serve them just as they are, using toothpicks to pick them up. For a buffer supper, with the salad a centerpiece dish; use the tiny mushrooms for a top garnish. They're nice tossed with a green salad, exactly as the anchovy. The price is slightly frightening, ten ounce ＄1.25.
Fresh date butter made to keep fresh without refrigeration can be ordered parcel post for use as you will in ice cream, in milk shakes, for date cookies, a date pie. The butter is packed in two-and-a-quarter-pound containers sent postpaid, price ＄2.40, from the Valeric Jean Date Shop of Thermal, Calif. This is the first fresh date butter ever made up for shipping. The drawback before has been its poor keeping. This butter is a firm mix of ground dates, blended with desert honey, put together by some secret fashion that keeps its freshness everlasting.
The Valerie Jean Date Shop has a new confection for the autumn, made of ground candied dated and chopped candied orange, grapefruit, and lemon peel, with chopped walnut meats. Desert honey helps hold' the richness together. This tree-growing candy sells, per sample pound, at ＄1.25, or three pounds, ＄3.50, five pounds ＄5.50, delivered post-paid anywhere in the States, Each piece is a plump pillow of gooey sweetness, made neat to handle by a thick outer coating of chopped candied fruit peels.
Henri's fine shop up at 15 East 52nd Street is the place to go to put on a little high blood pressure. Just look at the nougat made with California honey, made with imported pistachio nuts and American grown almonds, made as the French make it, the 8-ounce bars 75 cents, or buy a 1-ounce piece for a dime. Here are truffles—we mean the candy kind, finished in four different coatings. One is rolled in chocolate, one in granulated sugar, one in cocoa; one is fork rolled to give that shredded look. If your sweet tooth yammers something awful, the soft French caramels made with heavy cream ought to quiet it. These are also made in four flavors— vanilla, chocolate, coffee, and raspberry. Each piece is wrapped in wax paper, with 36 assorted to a pound, ＄1.50 a pound, about a nickel a nibble.
Ham àla king is a product designed for kitchenette homemakers. The sauce shades to brown, for it's made with a meat broth, the broth combined with milk and enriched with cream. A generous hand flung in the ham. Nice bits of meat offer a chew for the teeth, bits of mushroom, green peppers, peas, and pimentos. Sherry is in the blending, but scarcely detectable—yet the secret, no doubt, of the subtle blending of those half-dozen flavors. The product, in eleven-and-a-half-ounce jars, sells for 55 cents each, or three for ＄1.50, and no points asked, at Telburn's, 161 East 53rd Street.