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.
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.
There are bottled waters available that science says have been stored for centuries in the retorts of nature's own laboratory. These waters are rich in health-restoring and health-keeping minerals and in appetite-stirring, digestion-aiding carbon dioxide gas. Three of the best are bottled by the State of New York and just as nature made them. A highly perfected bottling process prevents air's contact with the waters, from the time they begin their long journey from the “solution channels” in granite and limestone, where they were compounded, until they reach you. These three types are available in numerous stores; Saratoga Coesa. The Geyser is an alkaline water incomparable for table use. An eight-ounce tumblerful claims to contain 8,890 bubbles. Someone must have counted them! It is saline, giving it a thirst-quenching quality. Test it for yourself now during dog days. Nice to know its bicarbonate of iron content gives it tonic properties. The Hathorn is suggested as a before-breakfast drink, which taken at room temperature, is not only a cathartic, but stimulates the flow of digestive juices and increases the activities of the kidneys. Also a tonic—its iron content is high. The Coesa water, bland and gentle, is a just-as-nature-made-it laxative. This water is prescribed by doctors to many sufferers of catarrh and stomach trouble. The waters are handled in New York City by Charles & Company, 340 Madison Avenue and in Brooklyn by Loeser's the price, six bottles,＄2.
Hot weather appetite is poles away from the cold. Those rich succulent dishes of the winter fail to tempt now. Yet nothing insipid, that's no go either. Cold soup as the meal's beginning is one way to coax spoons to action, and cold soups do more, they revive the sagging spirit. The jellied consomme is the queen of the summer and a special jewel in the diadem is that triple strength beef consomme, Steero by name. A good performance it gives, coming to a tender jelly consistency in just less than three hours. This is a liquid composed of tomato juice, beef extract and gelatin and is in concentrated form so water must be added in double quantity, then set to jelly. Too long chilling and it becomes overfirm, losing in both appearance and flavor. Hammacher Schlemmer, 145 East 57th Street, is one of the many stores handling steero, the 10-ounce can (six servings) 41 cents.
Molasses hard candy in its finest old fashioned version is made by confectioner Eugenia Tay and on sale in her shop in the Blackstone Hotel at 50 East 58th Street. The candy is broken in small pieces just a comfortable size for the jaw. Chopped cashews in this and exactly the right nut with that dark molasses flavor. A little honey blonde in the Tay candy case is the black walnut brittle, the prettiest eating our sweet tooth has ever encountered. The brittle thin and fragile as gauze, with the rich goodness that only black walnuts can give, the price ＄1.50 a pound.
Miss Tay has assorted box offers for ＄1.50 a pound, built in three layers, including a bit of everything best. Packed in the bottom layer is the butter crunch and black walnut brittle, then two layers of chocolates, with a few pieces of fruit jelly and one row of truffles.Cap sheaf of the box is a sheet of the chocolate lace for which Eugenia is famous. This is threads of brittle drizzled into lace pattern, than chocolate covered. Nothing else in the marked even slightly similar, this lace is distinctly a Tay invention.
There is a Danish honey cake for breakfast made without sugar, 60 cents for a small loaf at Old Denmark, 137 East 57th Street, and the stuff keeps for months. This is made of whole wheat flour and honey with raisins and currants and not a blessed thing else. Dark honey is heated to a thin liquid. Into this flour is beaten and the hot paste set away in the cool for two weeks to ripen. It ferments slightly, which gives it power to rise on its own without the addition of leavening. Before it is baked comes the long, long beating and the fruits are added and the magic of the seasonings. Slice the cake very thin, spread with sweet butter, serve with coffee early morning or late afternoon.
More dates will be around this winter than in any year ever. The domestic date supply is to be supplemented by 28,000 tons from Iraq and Iran. The War Food Administration arranged for the allocation in early summer so the dates could be packed and shipped to arrive in the States in time for Thanksgiving. In prewar years we imported about 25,000 tons of dates annually but the war cut imports entirely in 1942 and 1643. Last year allocations were made to the importers but military shipping needs prevented the sending of even half the supply.
Cobb's lime juice is a handy and for the thirsty days. The 12-ounce bottle holds the equivalent of 16 limes.Use it exactly as the fresh juice—that's what it is, the price around 38 cents in numerous chains—Gristede Brothers, Peter Reeves and Bohack stores.
August is the perfect time for a macedoine of fresh fruits in a crystal clear syrup flavored with the Swiss kirschwasser. Ever use kirschwasser? A little goes a long way used for this and that, a little at a time.