There is a second Major Grey imported by Jehangir Khambata, this seen in the usual tall exotic bottle of which Mr. Khambata has a supply to last through the summer. The mango and ginger root in this combination are cut in large toothsome pieces to bed in the hot spicy sauce. In the Javin brand chutney the fruits are cut finer; which you prefer is a matter of taste. The Major Grey name, we are told, is controlled by three Bombay manufacturers of chutney and a group of mango growers whose right to the trade-mark comes through long usage and by strict adherence to the particular method of its making.
This chutney varies slightly according to where it is sold, as national tastes vary. The United Kingdom, for example, likes the sauce rather thin. The Dutch like it sharper than the British, that is with a little more red pepper and a bit more ginger. In South Africa a sweeter chutney is preferred almost sugary and it's this sweeter type which sells best in the United States. Both the Javin and Khambata chutneys are handled by Hammaches Schlemmer, 145 East 57th Street, Martin's Fruit Shop, 1042 Madison Avenue, Enoch's Delicatessen, 872 Madison Avenue, and Ellen Grey, 800 Madison Avenue.
The gift artists, those three Marks sisters, have a proud new home at 9 West 57th Street, to show off their wares. The new shop is a series of shops within a shop. From the street you enter the large Alice-blue room of gracious proportions where the antiques are assembled. Here a vast array of rare English china. Upstairs a larger space for the larger antiques, a quiet room where the customer can sit and consider.
Center room downstairs is a miscellany of gifts. Up the broad steps at the rear are shops in miniature painted pink to simulate the little French shops of Paris. Here you find the baby corner, the sick-a-bed nook, the bath accessories, the candy shop. And here we stop—that's why we came. These are candies exclusive, made just for the Marks. Favorite piece of the lot is the honey almond crisp, a combination of ground almonds, in brittle crunchy squares chocolate covered, then rolled in the finely ground nuts; price for a pound, ＄2.75. The marshmallow fingers are long slivers of marshmallow, chocolate dipped, to cover bottom and sides, the mallow left showing on top—a pound is ＄2.00. Pecan patty at ＄2.50 a pound is a butter-melting caramel in a chocolate petticoat, the top covered with quarters of freshly roasted pecans. The caramel kinds number four—pistachio, vanilla, chocolate, raspberry. Marks' candies sell individually or in assortments, as you wish, the prices for a two-and-one-quarter-pound combination ＄5.50 and ＄6.50. Why the price difference? Fewer chocolates are included in the less expensive selection.
The small crystal urn filled with Jordan almonds is the featured candy gift; or have the urn filled with jam. The price is ＄5.50, boxed and splurged out in ribbons, bedecked with flowers.
There are innumerable tidbits for the cocktail hour. Blanched almonds one of the most elegant of the items, packed in one-half-pound jars ＄1.25. Here is salted cocktail corn, fried in vegetable oil, a year-around seller.
The first frozen orange juice we have noticed packaged, brick style, is handled by Macy's, a California juice of the tree-ripened Valencias. It's a juice hand-squeezed, free of oil from the peel. When ready to use remove the carton from the freezing unit and place in the lower portion of the refrigerator to remain overnight to thaw out for breakfast. Don't worry about leakage, the bag is leak-proof. The price is 29 cents for sixteen ounces.
It's mincemeat equal to that delectable one John Ridd brought to the high-born Lorna Doone in the year of the great snow. “Golden pippins, finely shred” John unctuously described the mince-meat, “with the undercut of the sirloin and spices and fruits accordingly, far beyond my knowledge.” Little House mincemeat is coming to town from Newtown, Connecticut, to Bellows' Gourmets' Bazaar—made with fresh tongues instead of the usual beef made from the original recipe used in the White House when John Quincy Adams was the president. Whatever Mrs. Adams, the brilliant hostess, served, history tells us, was top-drawer stuff. The mincemeat formula came to the present maker, polished to perfection by several generations of good cooks through whose hands the recipe has passed. It is a recipe that reads like a poem—but we promised not to tell, except to say it is made with beef tongues, with tart apples, with suet minced fine as flour. Into it goes raisins, the sticky kind and hand-seeded. There is brown sugar and candy peel, put we promised, no telling. Great crocks of this mixture are wetted down with sherry and a big drink of brandy, Nothing lily-livered about this Christmas pie filler. The mincemeat will be selling in two-pound jars, the price ＄1.75 or thereabouts.
Even the cows are celebrating for Christmas. Sheffield Farms report their dairy herds are giving eggnog by the quart, mixed to charge the merry bowl. Apparently the cows have added to their feed “sugar and spice and everything nice,” including a touch of rum flavoring. This eggnog which you can order through the milkman (or having no milkman, a local branch of the company) combines rich cream with eggs, sugar, nutmeg, and the flavor of Jamaica rum. A smoothly blended pleasant drink as it is without spirits to use just as it comes from the bottle. No beating to do, no additions to measure in, nothing to do unless you wish to add a “stick of dynamite” from your liquor shelf. This ready-made eggnog must be ordered three days in advance and is available throughout the holiday season, December twenty-third to January first, inclusive.
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