Celebrate! The first postwar shipment of Huntley and Palmer biscuits of London are in the shops of the nation. The line includes Petit Beurre, the popular tea sweets, Betterwheat, the wholewheat sweet biscuit, delicate, nourishing, and arrowroot styled for the children, often the first biscuit tasted by English infants. There is the Golden Puff, so fragile and flaky, ideal for à la King treatment or as a base for hors d'oeuvre, the ginger nut, the biscuit served with your tea on Atlantic liners.
Cheese trays will be in their glory again with the water biscuit's return. Remember the Huntley and Palmer short-cake, a sweet to serve with ice cream, with a compote of fresh fruits? Marie and Osborne, that slightly sweet biscuit, is imported to accompany the milk mug, to serve with soft cheeses. The importers of this English line are Heublein Sales Company of New York City, Meyer an Lange the distributors for the New York area. S. S. Pierce and Company of Boston handle the biscuit for New England. Thomas E. Fluke of Philadelphia has the Middle Atlantic states and in the Mid-west it's John H. Lindeman and Company of Chicago. Julliard Fancy Foods Company of San Francisco are distributors through northern California; Ostroff Trading Company, headquarters Los Angeles, through the southern part.
Manhattan retailers stocking the biscuits are B. Altman and Company, 34th Street and Fifth Avenue, Charles an Company, 340 Madison Avenue, an Maison Glass, 15 East 47th Street. They retail slightly over prewar prices.
There is nationality in eating chocolate as much as in cheese. The type preferred in each country differs more or less from that of its neighbors. But of all the world's chocolates, Lindt of Berne's Gold Label, vanilla-flavored, semisweet, is, by common consent, the best eating. B. Altman has received a shipment of this, also of the bittersweet and the very bitter. The 6½-ounce semi-sweet bar is 79 cents, 1 1/3-ounce size 19 cents, the 6 ½-ounce sweet 79 cents, 3-ounce sweet 45 cents, 3 ounces extra bitter 45 cents. Outside a fifty-mile radius of New York City, add the postage, please, if ordering by mail.
Maybe our palate has a poor memory but in general it seems that the importe chocolate coming since the war has shown a decline in quality. Some are too gritty, some are sickly sweet, others too flavored. It's a delight to find this Swiss sweet holding its place in the sun.
Cocktail eggs get the nod at West Coast parties. Eggs are twice candled, then given a hypodermic injection of eight kinds of spices along with butter flavoring and salt. Boiling next, after that shelling, then into a pickle of vinegar, sugar, and spices. After marinating, the eggs are colored with vegetable dyes before packing in pint jars in a spicy curing solution, which can be used as a base for a salad dressing.
On the East Coast Mr. and Mrs. Burton E. Moore, Junior, of South Coventry, Connecticut, present a similar idea, spicing eggs to sell in Hartford an New York shops. They are preparing the eggs according to a recipe that be longed to Mr. Moore's great-grandmother, taken from her 1846 cookbook.
Country-fresh eggs are used, these hard-cooked, then shelled and “put down” in cider vinegar seasoned with spices. After pickling, the eggs, which turn to a mahogany hue, are brine-packed in glass jars. They look very like the hundred-year-old eggs the Chinese serve as rare treats on festive occasions. But the brown is only skin-deep, underneath the white is creamy-toned, the yolk its usual golden self. The eggs may be used in salads, sliced on toast fingers to pass as a canapé, chopped and mixe with mayonnaise as a sandwich filling. We like these eggs cut in half, the halves quartered to place on an horsd'oeuvre tray.
Remember the eggs your grandmother pickled in beet juice to serve with cold meats? Pretty things, the color of wine, the centers golden. These Connecticut eggs are not nearly so handsome but in the eating, superior. Like other pickled products the eggs keep well without refrigeration, even after opening. Two stores handling spiced eggs are Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue, and Hammacher Schlemmer, 145 East 57th Street, New York.
Fresh meat is “flying” to England, the service initiated by Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue, who are airexpressing steaks, roasts, chops, an chickens in a dry-ice-cooled, fiber-glass-lined, insulated zipper bag. The store makes delivery to the air field but the receiver must meet the plane personally to accept the meat on its arrival in London. If he wishes, he may remove the meat from the case and air-express the carrier back to the store at a cost of ＄2.34, the bag to be used for future refills. The airline notifies the store when the bag returns; the store picks it up and holds it ready for the next order. The service is expensive but to those who haven't had a treat of good re meat for months on end the price doesn't matter—if there is money in the pocket. One order we checked consisted of two whopper steaks, five pounds each, an twelve loin lamb chops—the complete shipping and handling price, including cost of bag ＄10, was ＄47.50. The bag itself weighed well over a pound, the air express cost for bag and meat was ＄1.17 a pound, and there was a ＄2 handling charge.
The store is shipping eggs by air in metal cases in two sizes, two-dozen and six-dozen.
A new feature at the Charles store, and one more practical for regular use because the price makes better sense, is the tarred Swift Premium ham and bacon slab sealed against air which can be shipped abroad and kept in perfect condition indefinitely.
This black-tar dip with which the meat is coated is the same as that use during the war to protect airplane an gun parts from exposure. The meat is cheesecloth-covered with tear cords attached to help strip off the wrapper. Now into the dip and out to dry. It is black, shining as mica in its overcoat. An 11-pound ham will weigh 13 to 14 pounds. You pay 93 cents a pound for the ham and only shipping cost on the weight of sealer. Directions read to yank the pull strings, undress the ham, then hang for 24 to 48 hours in a dry place. Scrub, soak, cook like any raw haunch of the hog. Bacon is handled in the same manner for the same price.
You want only the icing on the cake? Only the jam on your bread? Only the cream on the milk? Here's something just for you—white meat only. It's a plump turkey's breast, honey-cured, bronzed by smoke, beautifully packaged—around three pounds, the price ＄10. All right! You like the cake an frosting, too, then have the whole bird, these run 8 to 16 pounds dressed weight, the price ＄1.50 a pound. Half birds, 4 to 8 pounds, are ＄1.65 a pound, and a pair of drumsticks—yes, second joints—go along, about 3 pounds, price ＄3.
Those who want turkey already carve may order the slices vacuum-packed in six-ounce tins to use as needed. They come both white and dark meat, taken from the same honey-cured, green-hickory-smoked birds. You can buy the meat by the case, twelve cans at ＄10.20, or by the can at 90 cents each. There is unsmoked turkey, too, dark and white meat at ＄8.40 per case or 75 cents a tin.
Those turkey treats are not from the ordinary run of turkey-world birds. These come from a flock of broad-breasted bronzes raised in pampered luxury, on Shagroy Farm at Millerton, New York. The breast piece is really broad, wide as two hands, and deep through, a solid chunk of delight. The texture is so fine and tender you can slice the meat in pieces as thin as gossamer. The flesh is cream-white with a tint of rose. It is heavily smoked, delicately spiced. It has the sweetness of honey—because there is honey in the cure.
It's a woman's notion, this smoking of turkey breasts to sell as one piece without the nuisance of wings, tail end, or drumsticks. The woman is Agnes Hose, largest turkey breeder in New England, mistress of Shagroy Farm an creator of the line of turkey products mentioned above. This year we visite her brand-new factory, which she calls a farm kitchen, but it's much more than that. It's a processing plant in every sense of the word. Every utensil there, worktables, washing tanks, soup pots, is of stainless steel of modern perfection. Nine families live on the Shagroy Farm to help keep it running, sixteen workers assist Mrs. Hose in handling the turkeys.
A new canned product she has ready this fall is the smoked-turkey, split-pea soup, thick and heavy, almost a purée. It carries an aromatic smoky flavor an is so heavily concentrated it should be extended with milk. The 10 ½-ounce tins, serving two, are 25 cents, or you may order 12 tins, ＄2.70 the price.
Newest delicacy is the turkey supreme, an à la King, but glorified. Mushrooms are butter-browned and use with pimientos in a spicy, concentrate sauce made with turkey stock and thickened with egg yolks. In packing, a wedge of white meat is placed at each side of the can. The center is filled three-fourths full with diced dark meat, then the can filled with the rich sauce. The 10 ½-ounce tins are 59 cents, or ＄6.60 per case.
The kitchen packs a turkey sprea for making canapés and hors d'oeuvre, 6-ounce tins 59 cents, a case ＄6.50.
As an introductory offer, the farm will send 4 tins of smoked-turkey, split-pea soup, 2 cans each of turkey supreme, of the spread, the smoked turkey slices, an the unsmoked turkey slices for ＄6. Address your orders to Mrs. Agnes Hose, Shagroy Farm, Millerton, New York. Prices as listed include shipping charges.
The greengage plum comes packed in sugar-sweetened brandy here from Bordeaux, a tight-skinned little fruit with skin on, about the size of a walnut, canned whole, the seed in; it's not imposing to the eye, but a yummy plum to the palate. This plum is to other plums as caviar to the other roes. Pint jars ＄2, quarts ＄3.75, half gallons ＄7.25.Sold at the Vendome, 415 Madison Avenue. Half a plum added to the fruit cup with a swig of the brandy gives the glamour touch. Or serve the fruit with chicken or duck, and there's pleasure in the eating.
The Javanese kroepoek is back, seen in Telburn's of New York, 161 East 53rd Street. Remember those small amber chips made of fresh shrimp and arrowroot which, dropped into hot fat, turned into flower-like puffs six times the size of the original chip? Crisp an tender, nonfattening, the ideal niblet for nibbling with a cocktail. Serve them with curries, as a substitute for the popadam; prepare them with cheese to pass with the salads. Sprinkle cheese on kroepoek as it comes hot from the fat pot. Or again sprinkle with powdere sugar and cinnamon for a sweet bite with tea. The chips retail at ＄1.15 a package in a quantity sufficient to serve ten to twelve guests.
Out of Java the sambals, oelik an oelik trassie, 60 and 65 cents respectively for the 4 ½-ounce bottles, offere by C. Henderson, 52 East 55th Street. These hot sauces are of many kinds but chief bigwig is oelik, without which no rijsttafel is ever complete. The Dutch are the folks on the lookout for sambals, which they use in preparing the Javanese dishes.
In the Henderson store are drie mushrooms from Italy and Italian green peppers packed in white wine vinegar.
The famous brand of Callisto Francesconi, pure virgin olive oil, packed in Lucca, Italy, is imported after six years; Trinacria, 415 Third Avenue, New York, has the oil, ＄12 a gallon.
A shipment of espresso coffee pots for the home serving of coffee in the Italian manner is available in the Post Mart, 230 East 78th Street, New York. The pots are made in five parts with a new feature added, a bakelite handle to keep the user from burning his fingers. For choice, two-cup size, ＄4.25; four cups ＄5.25; six cups ＄6.25. Add postage if ordering by mail. Selling with the pots is a black roast coffee, the Madaglio D'Oro, made especially for espresso brewing, in vacuum-sealed tins; 65 cents a pound is the price.