The experts who have tasted the Leavitt product say it is a cheese similar to the creamy delicious Reblochon of the French, made in the Savoy district between October and June.
The Leavitt cheese, like the Reblochon, is related to the Camembert family but less romantic; that is, it doesn't run into tears, but is more gelatinous, yet not so rubbery as the Bel Paese, for example. It is stronger. to the nose than it is to the palate, a cheese quite by itself in its nutty flavor, ideal for serving with clarets and sauternes.
When Kent Leavitt decided to start a dairy business, wife Molly said she would learn the details about handling the milk. Off she went to the Pennsylvania State College and took the dairy short course. That started her reading on the art of cheese making. State cheese expert, John Marquart, gave her good advice and she began trying her hand with a batch now and then.
But dementia! That cheese was a curiously jealous cheese, each pat in the batch tried to be different from its neighbor and in the most astonishing ways. Some were Peter Pan cheeses and didn't mature, some were fair-skinned and dreamy, altogether too delicate; some were overpowering and positively unwholesome; others ran like little rivers when cut through the rind. Quite a few were fair. a very few were divine, but how they got that way Mrs. Leavitt wasn't quite sure. She began taking notes on each batch. If she varied the making in any degree, it was noted in her diary. At long last, she learned what it was she did when the cheese came right.
Now every cheese comes out the same, identical to its neighbor, and every batch uniform. Poona is its name, made in flat oversize pancakes about one and one-half inches thick. The rind is a reddish orange, the paste a pale cream. The price is $1.50 a pound and the cake varies from one pound to one and one-four pounds.
Piqan is the newest homespun sweet, a thumb-sized roll, made with butter, sugar, flour, crunchy of nuts, so deeply mantled in powdered sugar each little cake looks like it's frosted. Crispy and dry, these short fat fingers are perfect to pass with wine, good with tea.
Backers of the Piqan are an odd trio a Long Island housewife, Mrs. Adelaide Grundling, and ex-lieutenant, John Laphan, just home from the wars, and a business-minded, want-to-make-money, advertising agency fellow named Franklin W. Dyson.
It was just another morning that marked the prelude to the cookie adventure. Mr. Dyson's secretary, Adelaide Grundling, suggested he try one of her mother's special nut cakes. She had brought in a box to pass around the office. Mr. Dyson had one, he had two, he had another, he ate them all. As usual Mr. Dyson had an idea. Hatching ideas is part of his job—so why not hatch a few for Dyson himself?
When John Laphan got out of the army, wishing to start a business of his own. his friend Dyson told him about the fancy little cakes; the two went to see Mrs. Grundling and for a fee, arranged to take over her recipe. Today the cookie business is an up-and-coming concern, located at 40-06 150th Street, Flushing, with Mr. Laphan in charge, and young Dyson handling the contracts in his spare time. Dyson has done a good job with the selling. Those Piqans, Mrs. Todd's Piqans (Grundling isn't a pretty sounding name for a cake), are handled by S. S. Pierce in Boston, B. Altman's and Bloomingdale's in Manhattan, and Loeser's in Brooklyn. The half-pound box is 89 cents; twenty-five cakes, each nested in a paper holder exactly like a fancy bon bon and all traveling attractively, are packed in a box of pastel colors.
BREVITIES: The “Island Packers” of the prewar Hawaiian fruit delicacies are at it again. Expect sliced papaya and papaya nectar and papaya-pineapple nectar, guava nectar, and sliced pineapple to be back in the markets this month.
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