1940s Archive

Food Flashes

Originally Published August 1945

Boom days have come to the town's smorgasbord mecca—that old fashioned Swedish delicatessen of Nyborg and Nelson, 841 Third Avenue, near the midtown section. Scandinavians of the city have been the steady customers of the shop since its opening a quarter century ago. But this year just about everyone is throwing a smorgasbord supper and asking the Swedish kitchen to prepare a full line of its delicacies. It amazes David Nyborg and his sister, Mrs. Gerda Nelson, the way the party orders roll in. It's like a new kind of food fad and everybody's doing it. But nobody, it seems,wants to undertake the Swedish snack-makings at home on their own. Anyway,why bother—this kitchen can turn out the innumerable good things and deliver the lot and arrange the party table for very little more than what the stuff costs if you took time out to gather up the ten dozen needed items.

What is this smorgasbord? You serve it at home very much as it's done in the town's Swedish restaurants—less variety, of course, but variety enough. Among the cold cuts are head cheese, liver pate, smoked eel, smoked salmon. Herrings, of course, and done in many ways—in vinegar,picked with onions, smothered in tomato sauce: every variety of fish that lends itself to sancketeering.

A few hot dishes should go along with the many cold appetizers. Brown beans are popular, so is creamed crab-meat, also the meat balls. Herring salad, potato salad, vegetable salads are stand-bys. A nice selection in chesses: Swedish cream cheese, caraway cheese,goat's cheese, the bleu. The breads are Scandinavian—flat breads, the Swedish limpa, sweetened with molasses, and a sweet sour pumpernickel, so admirable with the smoked fish.

It is Mrs. Nelson who will help you plan your smorgasbord party, suggesting, if you wish, foods to home cook if you want to experiment. The average smorgasbord as turned out by her kitchen costs around $1.25 a person. You must provide your own drinks for the party. And why not Swedish punch? It sells bottled, price $1.25 for twenty-five ounces, non-alcoholic; father adds the spirits. Something that gives lively zest and gets a crowd congenial in a jiffy is the cold akvavit, Scandinavia's national drink, a colorless liqueur with a caraway taste. Don't sip. Down the small pony all at one swallow. Quick for a chaser, a small glass of beer.

The Pan American Coffee Bureau has thought up a sweet answer to solve the iced coffee situation in view of short sugar. It is suggested the coffee take one or another of the liqueurs as a partner. Here is the recipe: Fill a tall glass with four ounces of ice and pour over four ounces of hot double strength coffee or three ounces of the regular. Now stir in one ounce of anisette or Kummel or creme de menthe or two ounces of creame de cacao or maraschino. No Sugar required. For a stronger concoction, add one and one-half ounces of brandy or the same of rum, but with one bar spoon of sugar. Creme de cacao is the best of these sweeteners as it blends so perfectly with coffee's own flavor. Brandy, too, is a natural. Rum is to our liking but it tends to overpower the coffee's rich goodness.

Orange concentrate packed with the liquid sunshine—the health-giving vitamin C—that has been doing war service on the battle fronts of the world is returning to civilian markets, packed in six fluid ounce tins carrying the makings for one and one-half quarts of orange juice, “Sun-Filled” the brand name. The unique method for processing this concentrate was developed several years before the war and introduced for institutional use in hospitals and schools. The item had but made its retail debut when along came the war and the entire output,over a million gallons a year, for lend-lease and the armed forces. Now with government orders relaxing, the Florida producers, Citrus Concentrates, Inc., again are packing the product for the home table. The first shipment is available at Charles & Company, 340 Madison Avenue, the 6-ounce tins selling for 69 cents.

What happens in the processing is that the water is snatched from citrus at low temperatures under very high vacuum. The result is that tests show practically perfect vitamin retention and little damage to the needle-like flavor cells in the juice. Nothing is added. The finished product looks like a marmalade but without the usual bits of the orange. To restore the concentrate to its natural juice consistency seven parts concentrate, then shake or beat to replace the air people expect in their orange juice. It's a tough time you will have to tell this from the juice of the freshly reamed fruit. After opening the product keeps perfectly for several weeks if stored in the refrigerator and no moisture added. The concentrate can be used as a flavoring in custards, in sherbets, ice cream, gelatins, pie fillings. A convenient emergency item for the shack by the sea or the weekend house in the hills.

Heels go tap-tap-tapping along the sidewalk and abruptly halt at Slama's Inc., 1161 Madison Avenue. Eyes hungrily devour the contents of the window filled to overflowing with an assortment of pastries arranged like clusters of cream-colored flowers. We gaze enraptured at the chocolate meringue pies, the jam-filled breakfast rings, the fruit tart collection. The chocolate leaves are delicate as exquisite ferns. And cookies! Butter cookies, nut cookies, trays of cookies, each different, each more alluring than the other. “How many kinds?”

“Count the cookies?” murmured the shop girl, indicating that such numbers were somewhere in the stratosphere. She touched the case with her hand, “surely forty, and the maple nut kiss.” Certainly we would like sampling a kiss. Crisp, dry, crunchy, pretty and pleasant with its ardent flavor of maple. No wonder these are so universally esteemed. Certainly we would like sampling the cocktail puff, a choice of the round, of the finger shaped. Just bits of tender puff dough, like feathers, split while fresh from the oven and filled with a three-way cheese blending. The cheese has been whipped and mightily; so it has a butter cream airiness, but surprisingly tangy. These trifles are a dollar a dozen and sell by the hundreds. The cheese straws are made with grated cheddar, snappy of pepper, 48 cents a dozen. Before serving give the straws one minute in a very hot oven, ditto for the puffs.

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