The tea was ready for market, but no name seemed to suit. Then it happened this way: One of Mrs. Bigelow's Park Avenue friends was giving an afternoon party, and it was suggested she try the new blend. Not a word was said to the guests regarding its novelty, yet everyone spoke of the tea's aroma, its flavor—there was “constant comment.” A good name, why not? Labels were made and the tea was hurried to the stores, where it is selling at around 75 cents for the two-and-one-quarter ounce jar. Expensive? But here's a tea so flavorful that three quarters of a teaspoon make six bracing cups of aromatic spiciness. The tea is handled by B. Altman & Company, Fifth Avenue and 34th, Gimbel Brothers, Sixth Avenue and 33rd, Martin's Fruit Shop, 1042 Madison Avenue, the Oxford Market, 931 Madison, and Telburn of New York, 161 East 53rd.
The hefty cranshaw melon returns for the summer, selling for ＄1.50 to ＄2, according to size, running eight to ten pounds, cutting ten to twelve portions. The cranshaw, a cross between the casaba and the Persian, has juice-flowing flesh mottled in tones of pink blending to yellow. A melon honey-sweet, vaguely spicy, its seed cavity small, its walls measuring two and a half inches across, and sweet meated, sweet eating, right to the rind.
Danish pastries made miniature are for the tea table service, price 50 cents a pound, as baked by the “Florence,” 2282 Broadway. These little sweet breads of the flaky rich dough are turned out in doll size, but are stuffed exactly as the large ones, with cheese and fruit fillings. Honey buns, too, are baked playhouse style.
Danish buttersticks—these are the giants, each a twist seven inches long, two inches wide, of a sweet and tender bread, the top brushed with icing, then scattered thickly with thinly sliced almonds. Sensation of the bakery is the Danish raspberry cup. Always there is a lineup of customers waiting for these to come from the ovens. They are of the same raised yeast dough as the Danish pastries, but are raised in muffin pans, each little cup lined with a pleated paper holder. The bread is rolled around a filling of raspberry jelly, seedless raisins, and cinnamon. After the baking, the top gets a sugar icing. The raspberry rolls sell in their paper cups—neat things to handle, an ingenious idea home bakers might borrow.
The “Florence” is a father-, mother-, sister-, brother-run bakery that in less than five years has grown from a side street slit-in-the-wall to one of the bustlingest bake shops on the longest street in the world. Some 1500 persons buy its sweet stuffs daily between eight o'clock in the morning and midnight closing. Twelve bakers work in shifts of four around the clock, with father as the big chief at the baking boards. Brother John is business manager, keeps an eye on every detail, and is in love with the job. Mother is the diplomat who keeps the customers happy. Sister Ella is an all-round helper, a first lieutenant to Mamma.
Spain sends her Mazanella olives stuffed with filets of anchovies, brine packed, four ounces 55 cents, found at the Connoisseur's Corner of Hammacher Schlemmer, 145 East 57th. There, too, we spied the antipasto from Portugal packed in pure olive oil. The contents of the tin include two pieces each of sardine, tuna fish, a hot stuffed olive, cauliflower, onion, artichoke, pickle. Add a slice of tomato, a spike of celery, and a few carrot sticks, and pose the array on a crisp lettuce leaf, thus stretching a three-ounce tin, price 38 cents, to do service for two, and generously.
New York is a city of kings, food kings, crowned by the public's approval. There is Barney Greengrass, the sturgeon purveyor, so sure of his sovereign right that his shop sign at 541 Amsterdam Avenue announces the store as a kingdom. There is Mike Levy in Fulton Fish Market, scallop king of America, with a long cigar for his scepter. The crown of one Italian king untouched by the war swings high over his door at 363 West 42nd, proclaiming to all that here-in reigns Bruno, the ravioli monarch.
But it's William Poll, owner of the 58-year-old delicatessen at 1120 Lexington Avenue, that we want to tell you about. He's king-pin of kings when it comes to herring laved in sour cream. Let the sales speak up—over 5,000 filets are sold every week from this one corner store. The herring recipe came from the old Waldorf kitchen by way of Mr. Poll's brother, who for many years was headwaiter at the red-brick Fifth Avenue edifice. Iceland herring is used, these bought by the barrel of 2,000 filets packed down in brine. First the fish is soaked in fresh water for twenty-four hours, then it's drained and joined with the sauce. Follows a four-day rest in the sweet-sour stuff. The sauce is made of 90 per cent sour cream, with mild vinegar, a trifle of sugar, a selection of spices. Evaporated milk is added, just enough to give a smooth-flowing consistency. Onions go in, but are first given a water bath touched up with vinegar to take out the burn. The fish retail at 20 cents a filet, and extra sauce goes along, also a big dip of the mild sweet onions.
Upper Lexington likes this creamed herring as a first course for dinner. They use it, too, as a snack for cocktail and beer parties. In the Poll's home, the herring are put to far better use, as a main course for supper. A great bowl of well-chilled herring in cream is passed with hot boiled potatoes, with hot buttered beets. Important to the main dish is the wooden bread bowl, heaped with thinly sliced pumpernickel.
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