The coffee cakes are legion as to kinds. There are fruit-filled rings, and one day a week the apricot is present. Brioche ring is one of the finest of the breads. Nothing fancy, but quality. If it's coffee in late morning, there are the coffee cake slices—Danish pastry dough cut into small pieces, rolled like an oval pancake, plopped into sugar scented of cinnamon, one side, then the other, now to bake. The little cakes are beguiling. They belong on the tea tray to be passed with tall glasses tinkling with ice.
Zesty stuff, deep gold, smooth textured, is the new style mustard cream of almost liquid consistency, a creation of Nance Delmarle Company of Rochester, New York, which have been making the product on a small scale for the past twenty years. It's a sauce that blends readily with many food preparations. It gives a lift to cottage cheese, it can add spirit to mayonnaise, and is just what it takes to devil an egg. The tiredest of those tired hot dogs around the town get a waggle in their tails if splashed with this mustard. Since the rationing of sugar and vegetable oils the company can only partially fill the demands of old customers. B. Altman & Company, 5th Avenue and 34th street, offer the 6-ounce jars for 26 cents.
It's a gilded cage if ever we saw one. Feathered birds cling to cages, bicycles, phaetons, all constructed of white enameled wire, loaded with delicacies and presented to the passing public in a merry-go-round display in the broad window of New York's newest gift shop, The Guildery, 547 Madison Avenue. Victorian is the word for this connoisseur's mecca done in pink mauve with surprise-pink lighting. This is the dream shop of Eve Brand and decorated by her husband, Mel Gusssow, a name outstanding in the field of commercial design.
Eve, formerly a packaging stylist for R.H. Macy & Company, has been scheming this store for over five years. In June of 1944 she opened the Guildery Gifts with her friend Claire Corbin. Claire ran the show, Eve kept her job. When the side-street Guildery began playing jingle bells on the cash register Eve knew the hour had come for moving lock,stock and baskets to a more glamorous home. In February she rounded up her savings and bought out her partner and set about looking for the right location. While Mel took over the interior doings, Eve searched for the unusuals in wrapping materials. She makes use of wall papers, suede paper, the new plastic films. All manner of things are used for package decorating—innumerable, unusual are the figurines used to top the sweet gifts.
Eve knows fine foods. She had her food-buying experience in the R.H. Macy grocery. The packets carry burdens delectable, everything from candy and cakes to truffles and caviar. Prices run miles, starting at ＄5.00, going anywhere. That bicycle built for two is loaded for six and costs 70. One bird cage we examined, bedecked with a bluebird, held the following collection: 12½ ounces chocolate squares, six ounces ice box cookies, eight ounces figs, one ounce truffles, one ounce caviar, two ounces fruit jam, two ounces assorted nuts, four ounces peanut dainties, ＄35.00.
Miss Brand's business is retail and wholesale. The Guildery designs are selling to cross-country stores. Eve Brand delicacy gifts are available at Julius Garfinckels, Washington, D.C.; Hochschild, Kohn & Company, Baltmore; Gimble Brothers, Philadelphia; Joseph Horne, Pittsburgh; City of Paris, San Francisco: and the Emporium, Jackson, Mississippi.
Again we can go adventuring among the great teas—and good for the soul! The first air-shipped cargo of tea out of China arrived early summer, the Ming Cha (“divine tea”) stocked by Charles & Company, 340 Madison Avenue. A black tea unblended, fresh and fragrant, ＄1.32 for one quarter pound. There, too, is the Earl Grey, 86 cents one quarter pound, also a Ming tea from Assam, one quarter pound 75 cents. It's your tasting. Your tongue can tell the difference only between sweet and bitter and sour and salty. This Ming tea of Assam has a fragrance enchanting.
If it's the black tea Irish style you would be brewing, a cup strong as the tang of turf smoke, Peter J. Marron will oblige at ＄1010 a pound, and send it mail order, and free the mailing for five pounds and over. Order under five pounds, the buyer pays the postage.Address your orders to Peter's store, tea headquarters for the Irish, The McNulty Tea Company, 109 Christopher Street in the very heart of New York's Greenwich Village. Peter is a grocery man, a tea fancier, who learned his trade in the provincial town of Carickmacross in Country Monaghan, Eire, long ago as a lad. Peter has a bigger business parcel post than over the counter, orders by mail running 150 a week, coming from two dozen states. No matter where the Irish go their orders come back for tea of the right taste. It's as Peter tells, “those with the Irish heart and the tongue keep the tongue and the heart.”
Peter carries other teas too, but not the rare ones that were common prewar. One recent arrival is the Darjeeling, also some stocks remain of that most celebrated of the black teas of China, the Keemun which brews a rich sappy liquor unsurpassed in quality. This is milder than many of the great teas of India but it has plenty of body and such exquisite flavor.
Non-melt chocolate bars are available for overseas mailing, made in Uruguay to the specifications of the Imported Delicacies Company of New York City. The first shipment is assigned to B. Altman & Company, 34th Street and 5th Avenue. 39 cents for bars of seven ounces, “Morris” the brand name. This built-to-travel confection carries a low fat content to withstand high temperatures in the hot climates. Apply high heat to the bar, it softens but refuses to melt.
New Orleans, the gastronomic capital of the southern states, sends her favorite sauce for the summer's shrimp cocktail, a sauce made in the kitchen of Count Arnaud's world-famous restaurant. The innermost secrets of this concoction are not revealed by the label. Herbs and seasonings—that's the only story it tells. But this much we know, at the base is a good olive oil, and there's plenty of paprika, no doubt Louisiana-grown. There are tomato and bits of celery, and at least ten to a dozen other oddments in a smooth, spicy harmony. But stir the sauce well before using or it won't stay together. Pour one tablespoon of sauce over each serving of shrimp, and stir until every pink comma is thoroughly saturated. Arrange by portions, five shrimps resting on a slice of tomato, and surround with shredded lettuce. At least that's the way they do it in the Count's restaurant. The sauce is designed especially for shrimp, but it is extraordinarily good on almost any seafood.Found at the sauce-and-salad section of B. Altman & Company, 5th Avenue and 34th Street, the 8-ounce jar 61 cents.
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