Brooks are running out of song. Birds turn more sober and flock as winter friends to pick the seeds of withered weeds. Trees grow bare except the oaks; appetites grow heartier except with anemic pale-livered souls.
Warmth ebbs away. The house draws close around the family at the dinner hour. We think of country kitchen foods, of fresh spareribs baked to a crisp, rich brown, stuffed with breadcrumb dressing, blessed with sage. Bring on the pots of long-baked beans, molasses sweetened, salt pork richened, mustard zested.
What's in the soup tureen? Vegetable soup, the hearty whole meal kind. Steaming hot. Dark rye bread with this, and pale sweet butter curls. Pass the crisp and radiant radish, the slender green-tipped scallion.
The nut harvest rolls in. A record crop of more than 23,100 tons of California almonds is expected. The walnut crop, though not so large as last year is 14 per cent larger than average. Filbert harvest runs 17 per cent below last year's crop but 59 per cent above the usual yield. Southern pecans are breaking all records, 74,000 tons is the estimate. Nut imports are coming to market again; Brazil nuts from South America; cashews from India, possibly almonds and filberts from Spain and Italy; maybe a few filberts from Turkey. Chestnuts will be here again out of Portugal.
Holiday feasting ahead. Little jars of good things are being put by for the great day occasions. Hungry for ham? Chunks from ham hocks packed for the armed forces are now available at the Dover Delicatessen, 683 Lexington Avenue, the one-pound twelve-ounce tin selling for ＄1.44 and 18 red points. This meat is best ground for use in a loaf. Mixed with pickle or relish, touched gently with mustard, a sandwich filling superb.
Snake hips are returning for hors d'oeuvre service. This time the canner is Ross Allen who bought the rattlesnake business of the late George K. End, a victim of snake bite. Mr. Allen, an expert on snakes and Florida wildlife, has built a modern canning plant to turn out 250 five-ounce cans of rattlesnake meat daily. Sweet and delicate the meat of the snake.
Straight from the gates of paradise wing the little pink angels into a dozen cities south, north, and west as far as St. Louis. “Angel Shrimps,” that's what they are, taken from a salt water inland river, thirty miles south of Charleston. Just shrimp when netted—little, sweet, tender—but just shrimp! It's Mrs. Eloise Lynch Palmer, Charleston born and bred, who gives the wee shrimp their wings by christening them angels. Shrimp by the bushel enter her Rockland plantation kitchen to be cooked, peeled, and packed in a special sauce of vinegar with oil and a big dash of wizardry. Then off to the delicacy stores around Richmond, Virginia, off by mail to a wealthy clientele of the North, who discovered her kitchen when South for the hunting.
Garden-minded Northerners who visit Charleston in March to look at the gardens hear rumors of shrimp angels and travel to the Rockland plantation to dine on the shrimp which have undergone the famous Palmer treatment.
A banker back from a shooting season gave a jar of these shrimp to Dick O'Brien, head of the men's bar at the Ritz. Dick, in turn, showed them to Peter Greig, food and wine procurer for the gourmets of the town. Mr. Greig on a food pilgrimage South, stopped to call at the Palmer's and now shrimp cherubs go traveling to a dozen cities. These shrimp come in two sizes, the large 70 to 90 to the pint measure, tinies called “chicken” run 175 to 200 to the jar. B. Altman's, Fifth Avenue at 34th, have sixteen-ounce jars of the small angels ＄1.38; Dussourd and Filser, 960 Madison Avenue, also have both sizes.
Other stores handling the delicacy are Wagshal's, Washington, D. C.; Henri's, New Haven, Connecticut; Guenther and Handel, Springfield, Massachusetts; R. L. Christian Company, Richmond Virginia; William B. Chase Company, Providence, Rhode Island; H. & S. Pogue Company, Cincinnati, Ohio; Protective Union, Worcester, Massachusetts; A. Moll Grocer Company, St. Louis, Missouri; William Hengerer Company, Buffalo, New York; Louis Wolf, Rochester, New York.
Numerous the ways to put angels to service. We like them just as they are, right from the jar, dipped into a mayonnaise, its flavor sharpened with Best Foods horseradish-mustard or with a dab of Durkee's masterful dressing. Let the guests help themselves. Have toothpicks for lifters. Dip the shrimp into dressing, then to the mouth—two at a pick-load, one isn't a bite.
Shrimp for breakfast in the Palmer kitchen gets batter-dipped, then to fry in bacon fat with hominy grits, the real kind, which means grits cooked for one hour in the Charleston manner. Mrs. Palmer likes shrimp for a luncheon, sprinkled with lemon juice, rolled in lean bacon, baked in a hot oven—Off to the table planked on hot buttered toast.
There is a lobster-meat pack coming from Canada outstanding in quality. It is sweet tasting, tender, not in the least coarse or shreded, styled for use in salads or sandwiches or a creamed dish. Treat yourself—reheat the lobster in butter and serve accompanied with finely cut onion, buttered peas, oven-heated potato chips, and crusty French bread.
The six-ounce tin holds half a small lobster, that is, the meat of one claw packed in whole pieces, a long strip of the back and the smaller loose bits. It is just as if you yourself had pulled it free from the shell—the price 73 cents at Gimbel Brothers grocery. The meat of a whole lobster is stuffed into the twelve-ounce tin, priced ＄1.45.
It's high-test glamour you get in that seven-and-a-half-ounce jar packed with the smoked pheasant, the Fin-n' Feather Club label out of Dundee, Illinois. The sides of the jar are lined with perfect slices of the meat carved from the bird's breast. The central portion of the pack is made up of the unsliceable bits. The meat is kept moist and flavorsome with a dribble of the rich broth. The smoke flavor hides the gamy taste of the bird, but today;s domesticated pheasant haven't much gaminess to boast of in the first place.
Pheasant, of course, is a natural for the open-face sandwich to go with the cocktails. We suggest it, too, for the chafing dish and in a la King manner, and as an accent for salads, By all means, remember it for scrambled eggs at midnight. This jar of concentrated luxury sells for ＄4.00, three jars for ＄11.50, carried by Stumpp and Walter, 132 Church street, New York City.
Jewels in jars are offered by the Neiman-Marcus store of Dallas, Texas, mailed parcel post anywhere in the States. Emerald- and ivory-toned these jewels of the pickle kingdom—cucumbers, green peppers, butter beans, little green tomatoes, each vegetable hand packed in dilled brine with sprays of the fresh dill, flower head and all. The brine is made snappy with little red peppers, made beguiling with garlic. Into each jar has gone a bit of the crimson of the sweet ripened pepper, long spikes of celery, silvery rings of the onion. This pickle contingent is designed to use as an hors d'oeuvre, the dill flowers, pepper bits, and onion to add festive notes to the platter.
The dilled Italian tomatoes have been carefully chosen, each as like the other as peas in the pod. Tomatoes come in three sizes, little fellows no larger than marbles, others big enough to halve or to quarter, as a meat-plate garnishment. The little ones belong to the cocktail service; spear them with a toothpick and eat all in one bite. If smoked-turkey sandwiches are going to your party, serve them open-face with the sliced dilled tomatoes for a novel topping, these decorated with snippings of the dilled scarlet pepper—gay as a glow-worm!
Quarters of sweet green and red peppers are packed in the same spicy brine as the tomato. Try the red pepper bits to replace the pimiento in an a la King sauce. Keep the green quarters at hand and add snippets to give a dill tang to potato salad. Good too with the hamburger.
Whole butter beans are dilled and made snappy of pepper, a novelty as a cocktail niblet—but not very tender and apt to spurt juice.
Choice item of the set is the jar of dilled pickles, crisp as repartee, spicy as gossip, a pickle hot with the heat prick of pepper. Thinly sliced, these flavorsome chips are the garnish glamorous for the fish platter. The price is 65 cents the quart jar. Dilled peppers are 75 cents for a quart, the cocktail butter beans 85 cents, and 55 cents for the cherry-size tomatoes. There is a 20.cent mailing charge on individual jar orders. A set of four jars would be a grand Christmas gift for the gourmet on your list.
Add to the fruit list prickly pears, a fruit thrust out of the maleficent leaves of the cactus. Handle with gloves, because of the needle-like spines, Take a slice from each end, then slit the skin the length of the fruit, and the flesh can be taken out whole to use as you will. The crimson flesh gives new interest to a fruit salad, or serve it sliced with a touch of sugar and a downpour of lemon juice, enough to rasp the tongue. It is bland its flavor, yet refreshing all the same. It amuses us to remember that P. Morton Shand describes this fruit as resembling “a ripening carbuncle or a publican's nose.”
Dried apricot halves encrusted with sugar, selling around 59 cents a pound, are here and there in the stores. The rumor is that the dried apricots are sent from California to Cuba, there sugar-coated, and returned to the States. The fruit may be used as a cake filling snipped to bits with the scissors, water added, half a cup or less to a half pound of the fruit, this cooked over low heat to jamlike consistency, just right for spreading between layers of cake. The apricot halves can be served as they are—a fruit-sweet confection. Selling in New York City at the Callanan grocery, 41 Vesey Street.
What is apple pie without the shock sharp cheese gives to the palate? Nine times in ten, apple pie is too sweet and mince too heavy, without the leavening of Cheddar. What is the fresh apple or pear without the nip of sharp Cheese—a Cheshire, perhaps, nicely blended with sauterne.
If you have ＄10 to spend for palate pleasure, the Vendome Table Delicacies, 415 Madison Avenue, can set you up handsomely with a five-pound crock of the cheese of your choice made snapping with spirits. What shall it be—Cheddar in Port? Edam or Cheshire in sauterne? Roquefort of Gorgonzola, brandy fired? Stilton in sherry? Swiss in kirsch? We bought a crock of the Stilton, influenced for the moment by that glorious epicurean paradox, “Give us the luxuries of life and we will dispense with the necessities.”
Paper-thin Brune Kager (Brown cookies), a specialty of the Danes, are offered, made with finely ground chopped almonds added to a batter sweetened with molasses and fragrant with ginger. Old Denmark, 135 East 57th, makes them to retail at ＄1.80 a pound, about five dozen—that thin!
A nation-wide search is on to find the “sweater girl of the hen yard.” The great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company are offering five thousand dollars to the poultrymay, who in three years' time, produces a bird by crossbreeding, which will come nearest to the ideal. The average bird of tomorrow must have a greater percentage of meat to bony structure, a larger proportion of white to dark meat, and a broader breast literally planked with white juicy flesh. In general, a chicken that will offer a greater degree of flavor and tenderness and contain more meat than any other chicken ever. While the boys are about it, why not breed a featherless chicken and one that's self-stuffed? Hear the cook's cheer?
Latest food to hop into the quick-freezer is the little Louisiana shrimp, cooked and peeled, selling at R. H. Macy's, the twelve-ounce tins ＄1.19. These are the shrimp so popular in the old French city to eat on a summer evening by the sea wall along Lake Pontchartrain. Find a cozy table there under the live oaks fronting the water, then order a plate of lake shrimp. Order beer and more beer for those shrimp cooked to order are red hot with pepper. The frozen shrimp are cooked unseasoned to make them practical for a variety of dishes.
Rum-spiked sticks of fruit cake are introduced as “Rum Fruities” by Frances H. Leggett & Company. Gimbels have the item, packed in round glass jars, thirteen ounces ＄1.09. The cake sticks are but three inches long, packed end up in the jar, laved in a thick syrup, dizzy of rum. The sweet is made from a Colonial Day New England Dundee cake recipe, fruited with raisins and figs, sweetened with honey, chewy of nuts. But give first praise to the sauce. This is exceptionally good as such sauces go, not a trace of that perfumed synthetic rum flavor we so heartily dislike.
Welcome a set of three smooth and unctuous toffee sauces—caramel, chocolate, rumbutus. The caramel does a fine something as a topping for a pancake. Pour the chocolate sauce over a waffle and call it dessert. The sauces, just the thickness of honey, can be used as they are, over ice cream and puddings. Or dilute them if you like, with cream, milk or hot water to pour as a syrup. Use them for flavoring and coloring a frosting. If it's chocolate sauce in your jar, try it this way: Dilute sauce with syrup from canned pears and bring to a boiling point. Serve hot over the cold fruit.
The C. S. Allen Corporation of Webster, Mass., are the sauce makers and a good job they have done with sugar and corn syrup in combination with sweet condensed skim milk, vegetable fats, and artificial flavoring. The sauces are selling throughout the Gristede chain, the ten-ounce jar but 29 cents.
There's a great little book coming from the presses aimed to carry you back to “Ole Virginy.” It's a book for the chefs, for anyone cooking for crowds. Its subject is ham. Not any old ham but the deviled Smithfield variety, the Amber brand. Forty-two practical recipes are given in quantity amounts, using this spicy meat delicacy. Here are recipes useful for home cooks when the crowd gathers for buffet suppers, teas or cocktail parties. Recipes are included for canapes, salads, sandwiches and hot dishes innumerable. Ham goes with baked lima beans, with corn in a pone pie. It teams with spaghetti, with rice, and with eggs. The ham is used as a stuffing for green peppers and tomatoes. It gives a savory meat flavor to a Spanish rice dish. The book is yours for the asking. Send your request to Smithfield Ham & Products Company, Smithfield, Virginia. Yes sir, we mean yes ma'am, it's well worth the trouble.
You are due to meet a vast crowd of soluble coffees. The field promises to be highly competitive, already there are at least two dozen brands on the shelves. Some are old friends; many more are postwar.
Soluble coffee's rush into market began early in June, immediately after the War Food Administration lifted the lid on soluble coffee production by returning to civilians the 100 per cent set-aside order, This type of coffee was known as early as 1910 but it was 1930 before it began to catch on. Then the war came and the government took over the pack.
The coming avalanche of coffees is not intended to take the place of the regulars but to fill a niche all their own in these modern-speed times. The coffee can be made in just a few seconds, perfect for hurried moments—no pot to watch, or to wash, no coffee grounds to dump out. There is absolutely no waste because the correct amount of coffee may be made cup by cup.
Two types of solubles are coming to market, the filled and unfilled. The unfilled are pure coffees, brewed, filtered, dried. The filled are pure coffees, but with carbohydrates added, dextrose, maltose, dextrines, the addition of which their makers insist arrests the original flavor to help carry it through to the cup.
One of the newest arrivals of the filled type is the Maxwell House Instant. This coffee was first developed for war use, a good beverage but not good enough, the company felt, to carry the Maxwell House label in the consumer market. Its war service ended, the company began experimenting to see if it could be made to approximate their regular Maxwell blend in flavor and aroma. All the research facilities of the firm were put to work on the job. By the addition of the carbohydrates the original Maxwell flavor was achieved. To get the aroma, that was the problem. This eventually was captured to a certain degree and put under control. It doesn't meet the full test as against coffee made of the freshly roasted ground bean but good enough, the firm feels, to carry their famous trade-mark.
It is a coffee easy to use; one rounded teaspoon of the cinnamon-colored powder is placed in each cup, then boiling water added. Three stirs of the spoon and the beverage is ready. Served iced, the making is easy as this: Add tap water to the powder in the glass, stir for a second until completely dissolved, add ice, add cream—what a rich amber color! Here's a coffee powder so instantly dissolving it can be added directly to any type of ready-mixed pudding powder. Use it, too, in flavoring whipped creams for frostings and fillings. Use it like vanilla, strictly to taste. The four-ounce jars yield approximately the same number of cups as a pound of the regular and at about the same price, 29 to 36 cents. The product is selling in both chains and independent stores and will be in national distribution by the first of the year.
There is a 100 per cent rye bread now in the market for the wheat-allergic victims. The bread is vacuum tinned, oven-fresh tasting, fine textured, thin slicing. Selling at H. Hicks and Son, 660 Fifth Avenue, the ten-ounce tin 46 cents. It may also be ordered by post direct from the maker—Hypo Allergic Foods, Horlamus Rye Products, P.O. Box 1712, Riverside Station, Miami, Florida.
This is one of the few 100 per cent wheat-free rye breads in the market, a three-ingredient bread made of vegetable oil shortening, rye flower and yeast. No wheat or other cereals, no milk, no eggs. It bites like bread, it tastes like bread that's steam-baked.
The bread comes to market because Irene Horlamus had a serious illness, and the bread worked the cure. No doctor could diagnose Irene's case until an allergy expert found she was allergic to milk, eggs and wheat, to all cereals in fact, except rye.
The doctor ordered a 100 per cent rye bread as the backbone of her diet, but a market search proved there wasn't any such thing except in small wafer form. The bakers were interviewed, claimed an all-rye bread just couldn't be made. Mr. Horlamus who had never baked anything, decided to bake such a bread. The first loaves he turned out were too hard to eat but after a few weeks the bakings improved and so did the patient. the doctor was impressed and asked Mr. Horlamus to bake loaves for others plagued by wheat allergy. Six months later when Mrs. Horlamus was completely recovered and again returned to her kitchen, she found her husband had started a thriving bread business there. The first loaves were carried by Burdine's in Miami. Then mail-order customers were acquired by the dozens, by grapevine advertising, as one doctor told another of this all-rye product.
To keep the bread fresh on its travels, Mrs. Horlamus tried baking the loaves in coffee cans, then sealing the lids air-tight with adhesive tape. Thus packaged, it was found the bread would keep fresh for weeks. It became a popular item for overseas packages. In less than a year the bread business had outgrown the home kitchen; a laboratory factory was built which opened last summer. Now the bread travels to market in tins, vacuum sealed as the loaves come from the oven.
John H. Filser, the honey enthusiast, owner of Dussourd and Filser, 960 Madison Avenue, is busy again searching the world for rare nectars. Before the war the honey shelves of his shop offered 141 honeys from twenty-two countries. Stocks now total but fifty odd and most of these are honeys domestic. A few jars however left from prewar bear Italian, Bahamian, Grecian, Australian, and Dutch labels.