Shrimp are brought immediately to the farm factory, washed, iced, hel overnight. Early morning the catch is cooked, cooled, hand-picked, and packe into the sauce by early afternoon. Eight women-pickers are kept on the job, an a particular job it is. Mrs. Palmer pays the help extra to pick the shrimp out and leave the tail on, and that goes for the tiniest. Each shrimp must be perfect. Shrimp minus tails are used for the paste. After the cocktail shrimp are in the jar, a boiling sauce is poured over them made of vinegar, salt, oil, similar to French dressing but not so heavy. Chicken shrimp are packed 300 to 375 in a pint jar. The medium run 150 to 200; the jumbos are elephants.
The very tiny shrimp can be used in sea food cocktails or laid out on fingers of well-buttered dark bread as a go-along with the drinks. The shrimp paste is all the go at Charleston's debutante parties, mixed with mayonnaise to spread on crackers or rounds of bread, then a slice of stuffed olive for the decoration. For a salad Mrs. Palmer blends the paste with mayonnaise, rolls the mix into small balls, and arranges these on lettuce, six to a portion.
Newest fancy is the palmetto pickle, the heart of young palm put into a mustard sauce. Put-ups this summer will include figs, damson-plum jam, pumpkin chips, pears, pecans—all farm-grown.
Stores in New York stocking Rockland Plantation shrimp include: B. Altman, Fifth Avenue at 34th, Maison Glass, 15 East 47th Street, Vendome Table Delicacies, 415 Madison Avenue, Hicks and Company, 660 Fifth Avenue, the price around ＄1.50 for the pint jar. The tiny and the medium shrimp are handled by Dussourd and Filser, 960 Madison Avenue, and B. Altman have stocks now of the shrimp paste. In Washington, D. C., the Palmer line is handled by Woodward and Lothrop, also Wagstahl's. In Baltimore by Hutzler's, in Richmond, Virginia, by R. L. Christians Company and Woods Grocery.
Two Holland biscuits are back, the first to come since the war, the “Petit Beurre”and the “Marie,”made by Verkade's and known throughout Europe. These biscuits are the Dutch version of those crisp, dry, and not overly sweet English-type tea cakes. Plain as a butter plate, but just the right texture an flavor to pass with iced tea or ice cream or fresh fruit. The Petit Beurre, oblong in shape, sells two pounds vacuum-packed ＄1.95. The Maries are round an just a trifle sweeter than the Beurres, ＄1.85 for the two-pound container. Available at B. Altman and Company, Fifth Avenue and 34th Street, Maison Glass, 15 East 47th Street, and Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue.
The tin shortage has held back the imports, but a regular supply is promised now by the Netherland American Import Corporation, 346 West 15th Street, New York City. This firm has the exclusive distribution on all Verkade products, also of Blooker's famous cocoa and the Betz and Van Heijst's superior Dutch imported herring.
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