B. Altman & Company, 34th Street and Fifth Avenue, carry the Sherry dressing, the point bottle 45 cents, R. H. Macy & Company, Broadway and 34th, has the Burgundy wine vinegar, the pint bottle 39 cents, and the spiced wine sauce, one pint 44 cents. Macy's and Altman's both have the French-Italian dressing, the pint bottle 40 cents, or thereabouts. Hopper-McGraw of Baltimore carries the line in part, also Wanamaker's in Philadelphia, Frederick & Nelson in Seattle and in Los Angeles. Or you may order by mail direct from the Barra Company, 2806 N. Main Street, Los Angeles, Calif.
The gift of gifts—a brace of pheasants in all their natural plumage, traveling in a gay Christmas carton. The birds are especially raised for the table, with no toughies allowed. And so carefully handled! Before shipping, the pheasants are hung overnight to freeze, to insure safekeeping for several days without further refrigeration. They are shipped by railway express, with notice that immediate delivery must be made upon their arrival.
With the birds go complete instructions for their preparation and serving—how to lard the breast, how to season, how to baste, how long to roast. No detail is omitted.
Pheasants are so plentiful on the Berkshire Game Farm with its 800 acres of shooting preserve, that orders can be filled in any quantity desired. Send along your gift list with personal greeting cards, specify delivery date, and the Farm does the rest. The price is ＄12 a brace, which includes shipping charges. Address orders to Don Spencer, Berkshire Game Farm, Craryville, N. Y.
Homemade and divine is the Christmas fruit cake to order from Grassy Spur Inn, Green River, Vt. It's an exciting package to open, for the cake travels in a handmade wooden box, hand-blocked with pine trees, one tree for the one-pound size, two trees for two pounds, and so on up to four pounds. The price, ＄2.50 a pound, which includes mailing costs.
The G. B. Van Waveren family is responsible for this Christmas cake venture. Mrs. Van Waveren does the baking. Mr. Van Waveren and son make the pine boxes; daughter makes the blocks for hand-printing the trademark. The Van Waveren hens lay the fresh eggs that go into the batter; the Van Waveren cows give the cream that is churned into butter to enrich the masterpiece. Mr. Van Waveren gives his special attention to the blending of the wines for the cake's “spirited” fragrance. Other ingredients include six kinds of fruit and two kinds of nuts, and many, many spices.
This kitchen has plum pudding, too, made round in the old-fashioned manner, and packaged like the fruit cakes, selling at the same price, the sizes one, two, and three pounds.
A superb dinner ending are kumquats in rum, iced to a shiver, with the coffee black and blazing. The one-pound four-ounce jar ＄1.25, and no points; found on the shelves of the Gourmets' Bazaar, Bellows & Company, 67 East 52nd. And don't miss the Illinois bleu which the firm's liquor experts have blended with Portugues brandy, the fourteen-ounce crocks ＄1.50.
If you want a fine cake—better than you can make yourself, better than you can find in ninety-nine shops in one hundred, you will turn to the Iridor kitchen, 831 Lexington Avenue. The ＄1-size layer cake will cut four medium pieces. It's a white butter cake, the layers put together with thick, luscious fudge. The angel food cakes, of small size to serve four, are 50 cents plain, 50 cents extra when frosted—and worth it, with the chocolate icing piled an inch deep over the top. Or try the fresh orange frosting made with both the juice and the skin of the fruit—gooey and moist under the fork—a gastronomical seventh heaven.
Back several centuries, the Christian world considered eating mince pie a sin, for the pie, it was said, was pagan in its origin. As late as the Eighteenth Century few clergymen dared risk their reputation by enjoying a wedge of such wickedness. A sample of the mince pie of the iridor kitchen, and we agree with the old-time Christians, for here is a pie that leads to idolatry. Satan is a devil of infinite resources! There's so much brandy in this pie (10 per cent by volume) that you can break through the top and drink it up with a straw. But yoy pay for it too, ＄5 for a pie to carve up for eight. Pies are made only to order. “And don't order,” says the maker, “if it's a pale, anemic-looking crust you are after.” She bakes her pies golden.
Orders are being taken right now for mince pie, plum pudding, fruit cake. The pudding is ＄2.50 a pound; the same goes for the cake. Buy any amount from one pound to ten.
“What goes into your fruit cake?” we quizzed the baker. “Brandy, brandy, brandy,” was her answer. “And?” “But brandy,” she insists, “is the important ingredient, to blend and unite the flavors.” By third-degree questioning we learned the pudding is made of beef suet, brown sugar, molasses, a few bread crumbs, a dusting of flour. As to fruit, there are citron, raisins, currants, whole lemons, all of which are brandy-soaked overnight.
The maker of these good things is Dorit k Weigert, graduate of the Cordon Bleu de I'Academie de Cuisine de Paris, and head of one of New York's outstanding cooking schools. In the twenty-four years she has been teaching, she has trained thousands in home cooking, in hotel cooking, in tearoom management. She has trained chefs, pastry cooks, candy makers. Enrollment in her classes for chefs' training has dwindled since the war, leaving her time to crowd in a half day's work in the manufacturing of foods for retail selling.
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