Paul prepares the hot dishes with seasoned authority. He is proud of his roasts. He can do great things with a Vienna goulash. He does the most difficult of sauces with the greatest of ease. But salads and fancy fixings he leaves to the Mrs.
Gertrude's cheese platter is to a man's taste, the center a high cone of Hungarian Liptauer on a farmer's cheese base, blended with anchovies. capers, chives, paprika, caraway seeds, and just enough salt. The tower is a bower of radish roses, while the edge of the platter is ringed with a multitude of small sandwiches, every one a cheese kind. Cheese ribbon is a pretty thing, made with thin pumpernickel slices layered like cake, with white Canadian Cheddar alternating with the yellow American type. It's six layers high, the slices cut in thin fingers.
Fresh salmon salad for the buffet table takes the salmon's own shape. Chicken salad heart twins are for wedding buffets. One heart goes adorned with the name of the bride, the other with that of the groom.
These caterers make a wedding cake that has nothing to do with tradition—it's French ice cream sandwiched between thin layers of white cake, then the whole frosted and decorated in true bridal fashion.
The Gottliebs will turn out cocktail hors d'œoeuvres to your order of a dozen or into the thousands. Delivery is made in the neighborhood of the shop, that is, within a few blocks. Larger orders of 150 to 200 canapés will be delivered within a thirty to forty-block area. If the firm caters a party, it delivers to Long Island, Westchester, nearby Connecticut and New Jersey.
There is going to be precious little maple syrup around, and sugar, too, will be short, because of that early burst of spring which sent the sap up the tree and into the leaf so fast that it had the maple boys breathless. They hardly had the buckets hung and the fires started in the sugar house until the run was done. But maple man John Shelby of Barre. Vermont, has sugar to sell—five pounds “soft” or “pail” for ＄4, delivery charges prepaid if you live east of the Mississippi, or ＄4.50 for those of you who live farther west; three pounds soft sugar, carton-packed. ＄2.50 east, ＄2.75 west; five pounds old-fashioned hard sugar, ＄4 east, ＄4.50 west.
Mr. John has a package he calls “Sugarmaker,” a box chockablock with that fresh maple flavor one gets only in the springtime. In the pack is one of those nice little two-ounce sugar cakes just right for eating, a pound brick of old-fashioned hard sugar for converting into syrup, another pound of soft sugar, just right for cooking purposes, and one pound of maple cream, perfect for spreading on hot breads, on waffles, the price ＄3.75 east of the big river, ＄4 west.
Sweet memories of old Vienna are in those Pischinger tartlettes sold by Alt man & Kuhne, 700 Fifth Avenue. These are made in exact replica of the Viennese tartlettes composed of seven crisp, paper-thin layers sandwiched with a paste of almonds and chocolate. No more than a fourth of an inch thick are these pie-shaped wedges covered with bittersweet chocolate. They sell for ＄2.75 for a tin box of twenty large pieces.
A delicate brew is the pineapple vinegar which carries the faint taste and perfume of ripe Hawaiian crushed pineapple. It's pale vinegar, sparkling, perfect for a French dressing to use with a salad of fruit. The juice of the pineapple is processed in Hawaii, the vinegar made in California, aged in the wood. This is one of sauce-maker Barra's excellent products, here from Los Angeles, selling at B. Altman & Company, Fifth Avenue and 34th St reel, at 27 cents a pint bottle.
Nuts are everywhere. Baskets of mossy brown filberts, great bags of English walnuts with that fresh look of early harvest, new crop almonds, golden as honey, and southern pecans, in shell, out of shell, plain, or toasted and salted. Visit the Sutton Nut Shop, 159 East 57th, for nuts roasted daily, and a variety of kinds. Yes, pistachios. Almonds are there imported from Spain, and almonds domestic. Cashew nuts, too, jumbo in size, crisp-roasted, not the least greasy. The burnt sugar peanuts are one of the specialties. The nuts are dry roasted, then stirred in caramelized sugar, which gives a bitter edge to the sweetness.
Pecan bark is one of the good things of life; there's nothing to it but pecans thinly covered with bittersweet chocolate. This shop has an amazingly large assortment of chocolate bars, both the sweet and the bitter.
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