Cheers for the haggis. January 25th is Bobby Burns' birthday and again the Scottish clans will feast in the poet's honor on “Burns' night.” Again the haggis, wreathed in steam, ensconced on a great platter, accompanied by a bottle of matured Scotch will be carried aloft to the swirl of the bag pipes, carried into dining rooms of the nation where loyal Scotch clans gather in honor of the poet.
Again the ancient toast to the “great chieftain of the pudding race.” A blessing in the words of Robert Burns, a grace first given extemporaneously at a dinner when haggis was the pièce de résistance. The ode to the haggis is long, it is fervent. These six lines are those frequently recited at Bobby Burns celebrations.
“Fair fa' your honest sonsie face Great chieftain o' the puddin' race! Aboon them a' ye tok your place Painch, tripe or thairm Weel are ye wordy o' a grace As lang's my airm.”
The pudding bag is slit from end to end with a dirk. “And then oh what a glorious sight warm reekin', rich!” No dainty sweet but a lusty tidbit made of the “paunch and pluck” of the sheep, as the stomach, lungs, heart and liver are called. The paunch is cleaned and the heart and liver (not always the lungs) are chopped or hacked. Haggis came from the old dialect word hag meaning to chop. And to this is added chopped onion and stone ground oatmeal toasted and browned. There is chopped suet to keep the pudding light, salt and pepper for seasoning, and rich broth for the moistening. The whole is stuffed into the cleaned paunch and the opening lightly sewed. Now gently to boil four to five hours. The bag must be pricked from time to time to allow the oatmeal to swell.
Haggis is never the main dish, but a wee portion is placed on the plate along with the meat course. But before a fork is lifted a stiff shot of good Scotch whiskey neat, “To Bobby Burns!”
Looking for a haggis? One perfectly made? Order from the Drew Brothers store at 6815 Fourth Avenue, Brooklyn. Here the preparation of Scotch meats and pastries is a year-around business. Only haggis is extra curriculum. The Drews prepare food Scotch as the burr of a Highland tongue, enticing as mist over bonnie braes knee-deep in heather.
Tawny mutton pies come from their ovens, some 300 daily filled to the brim with a savoury mixture of finely ground mutton, salt and pepper seasoned. These are meat hearties to enjoy with coffee or to use as a main meat dish for supper.
The Lorn sausages, 55 cents a pound, are of two kinds, the sliced and the link. No pork in the Lorns, these are of beef shin and the round and trimmings from steaks. Suet is added and a special blending of spices.
The shortbread, one of the shop's top sellers, isn't quite up to its prewar standard. Today the bread is only part butter and tastes more like a Lorna Doone than an out and out shortbread. It sells in fingers, in squares, rounds and quarter-rounds. The breads are made in wooden molds which came from Cruikshank's in Edinburgh, as did the molds used for the fern cakes and the apple tarts. Freshly baked oat cakes are a fine thing, buttered to eat with snappy cheese, the mealy savour of the imported Scotch oats so round in the mouth against the sharp, smooth feel of the cheese.
Scones of three kinds, the plain or cream scone, a soda scone, and it speaks right up with its soda too, and Sultana scones, these raisin-speckled. These to split and crisp to a deep brown, then to cover thick with butter, and delicious with homemade black currant jam.
Other biscuits on hand are the Abernathy, the Banbury, the Perkins. This last, by the way, is the hottest spiced sweet we ever put tongue to. What it is we don't know, but it's a biscuit like a hot water gingerbread, baked hard as a rock and hot as unmentionable places.
If you live in Manhattan, and Brooklyn seems a far journey, Rahmeyer's store, 1022 Third Avenue, has a limited selection of these Scottish items. Here are mutton pies, individual size, 10 cents apiece. Here are steak and kidney pies to please the Scotch as well as the English, but to be ordered, please, one day ahead. The smallest size, serving five, is priced ＄2.75, with a 50 cent deposit to be paid on the pie tin. The pie is made with steak, cut in largish pieces, combined in a deep dish with quarters of kidney and a rich beef gravy, the top a regal crown of puff paste. This steak and kidney pie is more steak than kidney, the meat is tender, the gravy delicious. The excellence of the gravy, you know, is the final test of any meat concoction in crust.
The Rahmeyer case doesn't have the Drew store's variety among the pastries. But there is the Swiss tart which is made in a crinkle edge patty pan, one brought from across. The pastry shell is of short cookie dough, the filling unsweetened, chopped apple, baked without seasoning. A restrained dusting of powdered sugar rests lightly on the top crust.
The fruit squares, six cents each, are tender squares of crust, sandwiched with a mixing of currants, raisins and sweet crumbs. Spiced granulated sugar is sprinkled over the square when it comes from the oven, and while still warm this is cut into small oblong pieces.
Two carloads of reindeer carcasses arrived in New York City for holiday eating, and there is still reindeer enough to last out the season. Here's meat that came a long way, from Minivak Island off the Alaskan coast where it was rounded up under government approval and with the natives assisting, then slaughtered, dressed and frozen for shipment to the States.
A black-haired, idea-ridden young Coldwater, Michigan farmer by the name of Ed Butters brought in the reindeer, enough to make forty tons. Ed Butters is the Southern Michigan farmer who keeps a couple of hundred wild buffaloes at home on the range. They got there because Ed had the crazy notion to breed wild game as other farmers breed cattle.
It was during a meat-scarce period three years ago that Butters went into the buffalo business in a big way. He not only rounded up buffaloes from all over the country to sell as a point-free steak, but he stocked his farm with the animals and started building a herd. His plan is to supply the game market annually with at least 100 head. The buffalo venture led to other ideas, reindeer for one.
The Minivak Eskimos make their reindeer round-ups on foot. Six of them working a week or ten days can bring in a herd of a thousand. As they near the home village a smoke signal is given and the town turns out, men, women and children, to help with the capture. The butchering is done in a modern abattoir where all carcasses are carefully processed under government inspection, then cooled for forty-eight hours before being frozen. After that into cold storage compartments of freighters and off to the market.
The meat is selling at E. Joseph's in Washington Market. Prices of the choice cuts run as follows: Boneless shoulder roast ＄1.50 a pound, legs and rump ＄1.25 a pound, shoulders 90 cents a pound, steaks ＄1.75 a pound, rib or loin chops ＄1.50 a pound, stew meat 50 cents a pound, chopped meat patties with bacon 75 cents a pound.
Sea-fresh oysters, trade-marked “Fireplace,” have been a mail order since 1938, handled by J. and J. W. Elsworth Company of Greenport, Long Island. The first year oysters went traveling from sea bed to table only 600 boxes were shipped. The next year over 4000 boxes were mailed. Last year the total was 12,000 boxes, this year to date 16,000 orders have been filled.
The Elsworth firm is no upstart in the business, a going concern since 1839. Even the express package idea credited to young J. W. the third is just a variation on a gamble his great grandfather, Joseph William the first, took back in the days of the “forty niners.”
The story is that a man named Morgan came from the West Coast to try to buy oysters for delivery in San Francisco. There the gold rush was on and men who hit pay dirt would pay anything for a favored food. Morgan went to the Housman Company, suppliers for hotels and restaurants, and asked if they would send a barrel of oysters on trial. Those Dutchmen were taking no chances. To ship a barrel of oysters across the continent would cost ＄200 and if it spoiled en route they were out of pocket. Great-Grandpa Elsworth heard of Morgan's request and said he'd take a chance. The old boy must have shipped more ice than oysters for the bivalves arrived in perfect condition. They sold in the West for ＄10 apiece. After that Morgan went whole hog for oysters and the Elsworths shipped them by the hundreds of barrels.
That man Morgan had another idea; he would cultivate oysters in the San Francisco Bay. He ordered the Elsworths to ship “seed” along. Five or six barrels were turned overboard into the bay and soon plumped into shapely maturity. Thereafter the Elsworths shipped “seed” to the West four or five carloads a day through the season until the earthquake. The upheaval ended the oyster-growing venture by turning the bay's bottom topsy-turvy and burying it deep under silt. Just for the record, the bay has been cleaned in part and oysters are being raised again on a small scale. Yes, the Elsworths send the “seed,” about two carloads a month during the season.
After the earthquake the Elsworths did business locally like other Long Island oyster growers and prospered without benefit of novel ideas until young J. William had his mail-order brain wave. His idea is that oysters needn't be a luxury food, and that by direct buying everyone can afford the finest of the crop and eat of them often.
The price of a box is ＄3.50 plus the express charges. This provides forty-eight oysters in shell and one quart opened, or have two quarts opened if you prefer, or a third choice is ninety-six in the shell. An oyster-opening knife is included for ＄1 extra. The oysters are ice-packed in a heavy wooden box. If the shipment travels more than 200 miles the express company re-ices en-route. Since the mail order box was first offered “Fireside” oysters have gone into every state in the Union. One shipment was sent all the way to Australia and arrived in perfect condition. Address orders to J. & J. W. Elsworth Company, Greenport, Long Island, New York.
It's a ham—the king of hams! It comes from a smoke-house in the Pennsylvania Dutch country, it comes traveling by mail and is a ham as different from the average commercial ham as a chestnut to a buckeye.
These are hams from especially selected young hogs, corn-fed, and you know it by the meat's fine texture. These are hams dry-cured, then, just before the smoking, sprayed with imported Madeira. Then they go into the hot smoke of slow burning hickory, mingled with herbs. It's the herbs and the wine that give that upward push to the flavor. The smoking is done under temperature control which insures the meat cooked exactly right, ready for eating, every ham done alike. An air-conditioning system distributes the smoke to all points of the room in equal amounts. No ham can be under- or over-smoked. Finished, these hams are as alike in perfection as peas in a pod.
These compactly meat haunches, 12 to 15 pounds apiece, are brown as rubbed walnut and just as gleaming. These are hams ready to slice and eat cold or reheat and dress in a brown sugar coat, or bake with molasses, or glaze with tart jelly. How easily the knife slips through the crunching crust, through the rosy meat, pink slice falling on pink slice. A thin layer of the creamy fat shows along the edge of the pieces, this brown tinged from the heat and the sugary glazing. Juicy this ham, and tender, a noble dish to set before an appreciative guest. The price is 95 cents a pound, express prepaid to any part of the country. It is packed in a box gaily decorated in Pennsylvania Dutch design done by a local artist of the Dutch country.
Bacon sides from the same fine corn-fed hogs sell at 75 cents a pound and average 10 pounds, these too dry-cured, hickory-smoked. It's bacon firm, rather dry, not the least flabby. It has clear white fat, the lean is of good pink color, the fat and lean well intermixed. It is fine-grained bacon with firm velvety texture, free of coarse fibers. Take a sniff. Notice the odor is mild, sweet, meaty.
The hams and bacon are from Hickory Valley Farm, Little Kunkletown, Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, the home of those smoked turkeys we told you about just a year ago this November after a day's trip to the farm. There off the beaten lanes of travel, deep in the soft rolling country of Pennsylvania Dutchland, we found 3,000 white Holland turkeys, and the bronze, too, living in sated luxury like the fatted geese of Strasbourg. The turkey houses, the processing plant, everything there is modern as money and scientific engineering can make it.
A beautiful bird they turn out, smoked golden, dressed in a talented manner. Plump, light meat beneath the golden exterior, the dark meat pinkish, the breast meat creamy white with here and there a thread of rose. The smoked turkeys are ＄1.50 a pound, shipped prepaid and selling now in all 48 states. These, too, travel in the colorful Dutch designed box.
Three turkey products are offered for the first time this winter, sliced turkey and buffet cuts, the eight-ounce tins ＄1.50. The smoked turkey meat and giblet pâté ＄1 for 8 ounces. These prices include the shipping costs. Address your orders to Hickory Valley Farm, Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.
Overtired! Overfed! Overdrawn! After the Christmas jubilee is no moment to consider the New Year's bounty board. So here goes, for hospitality still hangs high. Take an aspirin, take a brandy, and wait to balance the budget the day after the big night.
Take pen in hand or the telephone and get Mrs. Agnes Hose, Shagroy Farm, Millertown, New York, to ship along the novelty of the season, a smoked turkey breast, ＄4.75 for a pound, and each breast tipping the scales at three pounds and a bit over. But it's every slice white meat and that's what you want, isn't it, when there is a party in the offing?
These turkey breasts are not from the ordinary run of turkey world birds. These come from a flock of broad breasted Bronzes raised in pampered ease in the most modern of houses. At the Hose Farm in the Berkshires you find turkey city. The birds are farm raised from the egg to the smokehouse to the canning retort. For ten years Mrs. Hose has been developing this flock which represents one of the largest turkey ventures in New England. She had 7,000 birds this year ready for holiday sale.
Since the beginning she has been breeding for quality, for broad meaty breasts. Take a look at that smoked specimen. It's a breast really broad, broad as two hands and deep as two fists, a solid chunk of delight. The texture of the meat is fine, it is tender. You can slice the creamy rose-tinted flesh thin as gossamer. The meat is delicately smoked; it has been delicately spiced and herb-tinctured in a cure sweetened of honey. It is velvet to the tongue.
There are four canned products in the Shagroy line, each as luxurious in its way as the smoked breast. Sliced turkey meat for one, this the unsmoked, but running sweet juices. There is a smoked turkey pâté made of meat and giblets. Two soups for your choice, one is plain turkey soup loaded with meat, both the dark and the light. The other is smoked turkey mushroom soup, a gorgeous creation. The base for this is a combination of the broth of smoked turkey and the broth of turkey natural, with smoked turkey meat coarsely ground and very large bits of mushroom, a little onion and butter, a little flour for the thickening, a blending of spices and seasonings and all laced through with sherry.
The turkey breast or whole turkeys or the canned items may be ordered direct from the farm. The kitchen offers a variety of basket gifts also, from ＄3 to ＄30. Write to Mrs. Hose and ask for her catalogue listing the selections and prices. If you live in New York City the complete line is assembled at George Shaffer's Market, 61st Street and Madison Avenue. Prices as follows: Turkey breasts around three pounds at ＄4.75 a pound; turkey mushroom soup 10 ½ ounces, 59 cents; turkey soup, the meat unsmoked, ten ounces, 45 cents; smoked turkey pâté, six ounces, 89 cents; fresh turkey slices, dark and light meat, six ounces, 98 cents.