The evolution of our Christmas dinner is a story of robust, merry feasting, of wholesale hospitality reaching down the centuries. Just where and when the first Christmas feast occurred, records fail to tell. But by the eleventh century strange and marvelous dishes began to load the long tables in the holly-decked halls where with “mirth and princely cheare” our husky ancestral cousins dined during the twelve days of bountiful Yuletide feasting.
Bringing in the boar's head had become a tradition as early as 1170 when old manuscripts tell of the ceremony being performed “according to the manner” or as decreed by the Emily Post of those days. The suckling pig in high favor for Christmas and New Year's tables is the modern version of this medieval dish. At E. Joseph's in Washington Market, in leading markets everywhere, the pigs are on hand this year, around 75 cents a pound. Pigs come wreathed in holly, a red apple in the mouth, not too different from the bedecked “processional head” of Old Christmas in England.
Let's step aside. See how they served his honor in the old years. Music outside, profuse rather than refined; so is the menu. In bursts the jester, more gaily goofy than ever. Now the boar's head! Instantly the entire company rises to its feet. Two handsomely costumed heralds raise silver trumpets. Before the notes have died away the chief cook carries in the massive platter holding the boar's head, garnished not with wispy parsley but with a substantial wreath of bay with sprigs of rosemary in its ears and a roasted red apple in its mouth.
Minstrels follow the lordly dish, then come the upper servants, each carrying aloft some lesser dish to grace the Christmas board. The menu arrives in regal state to the high table while the minstrels sing carols.
The autocratic peacock graced the tables of England's feudal lords as the democratic turkey graces ours today. Skinned before roasting, stuffed with spices and sweet herbs and then reclothed with its own feathers, it was brought to the banqueting hall in stately pageant by the “first lady” of that distinguished company. To the strains of music the honored guest attended by her retinue of young maidens carried in Juno's bird. Around flocked young knights errant to make solemn vows over the feathers.
Grace A. Rush of Cincinnati, maker of the Martha Ann products—the fruit-cake, hard sauce, spiced nuts, and conserves—has a trio of gift boxes that are as fine as you will meet anywhere for the money. The box itself is red-and-gold striped with gold lid, tied with blue ribbon. The best buy to our thinking is the No. 2 box, priced at ＄3.95, which carries a 14-ounce fruitcake, 4-ounce jar of brandied hard sauce, 10-ounce jar of walnut and ginger conserve, another of grapes and walnuts. The No. 1 box, ＄3.59, carries a 4 ½-ounce jar of spiced almonds, the same of mint almonds, and the two jars of conserves. A third box, selling at ＄4.49, has the conserves and the almonds, plus a 5-ounce box of glacéed fruits.
Here are a few of the hundreds of fine shops across the country handling Rush gift boxes: Korrick's Dry Goods Company, Phoenix; Bullock's, Los Angeles; Hamilton's, San Diego; Quality Grocer, New Haven; Davison-Paxon, Atlanta; Marshall Field, Chicago; L. S. Ayres, Indianapolis; D. H. Holmes, New Orleans; Hopper, McGaw, Baltimore; Albert Steiger, Springfield, Massachusetts; Dayton Company, Minneapolis; Kaune Grocery, Santa Fe; Rike-Kumler, Dayton; Crescent Grocery, Oklahoma City; Simon Davis, Dallas. In New York City: Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue; Maison Glass, 15 East 47th Street; H. Hicks & Son, 660 Fifth Avenue or 30 West 57th Street; George Shaffer, 673 Madison Avenue; Joseph Victori, 164 Pearl Street; in Brooklyn, Abraham & Straus. If it's more convenient for your Christmas shopping, send your order direct to Grace A. Rush, 3715 Madison Road, Cincinnati 9, Ohio.
In the shop of Gina and Selma at 1048 Lexington Avenue, the very heart of Christmas beats. Christmas wasn't meant to be neckties and socks, silk scarves and ash trays, store-wrapped and mailed. Real Christmas is made of finer stuff, one part whimsy and one part love and add what you will. Gina and Selma have made Christmas what it should be. Go there for things to make your tree shine like the stars, to make children solemn with “ohs” or explode with quick laughter. Fat Santa is on hand molded of chocolate, so are his reindeer. Santa's red boot is formed of spun sugar, there's a spun-sugar sleigh, a spun-sugar chimney decorated with spun-candy bows and holly, bright with red berries.
Wax pears and apples are hand-molded, hand-painted; pull the latch string, and one side of the fruit opens wide like a door to show a miniature setting. One setting is a shining glory in gold paper portraying the Madonna and Child. A second pear shows the Christmas Angel blessing the gifts on the Christmas tree, a third apple carries the Christ Child with an apple in His hand. There are story-book scenes, Red Riding Hood meets the wolf, Snow White frolics with the dwarfs. These handmade waxen fruits came before the war—are now back unchanged, lovely as ever, the price about ＄2.50 boxed and Christmas-wrapped.
Shown with the wax fruit is the Christ Child in the manger. The Child is formed of wax and beautiful in each detail of figure. These are available in various sizes, ranging from ＄1 to ＄6.50.
The little shop holds everything for dressing a tree. Gay bags are filled with sweetmeats, shining red, blue, and yellow paper cornucopias wait to be stuffed with hard candies to hang from the green branches. There are candy canes in all sizes and barley sugar lollies. Back are the rings of solid chocolate covered with a sprinkle, those little candies, you know, called “hundreds of thousands.”
Hello! Christmas snappers and red flannel socks bulging with candy and miniature toys. The sock itself is decorated with animals cut from oilcloth. After-dinner mints are topped with wreaths, candles, holly bells, priced around 90 cents a dozen. Large decorated mints are made to sell for 25 cents apiece. The spun-glass boot, bell, chimney, and sleigh are for table favors or for a small gift. These are expensive, running from ＄1 to ＄1.25 apiece.
New York's Germantown, known as Yorkville, is gay again for the first time since the long war. When Yorkville gets itself dolled up for Christmas, it holds more joy for the eye and fancy than any other section of the big city. You can hear sleigh bells, almost, and the velvet beat of the reindeers' hoofs. We go to Emil Geiger, 206 East 86th Street, for tender gingerbread hearts, little ones the size of your hand, big ones a foot long. Christmas trees are snowed under white frosting for the hearts' decoration or maybe it's a cluster of musical bells, or a fat Santa with nose the hue of a holly berry. In the shop cases are displayed the freshly baked Lebkuchen, the marzipan sausage.
Gingerbread houses, trimmed with wee cakes, cookies, and candies, show elaborate skill in construction. Even a tiny house is beautiful to a detail, sugar icicles drip from the eaves, and candy-stick pillars hold up the small porches. Every house has its porch all gay as merry-go-round in pink, green, white, and brown.
This month Geiger's are baking the Baumkuchen—the Christmas cake king. Baumkuchen is a tree cake, baked on a revolving spindle before an open gas flame. This cake had its origin at the court of the Emperor Lucullus in old Roman times. A favorite wedding cake to this day in Germany and Austria, it is as much a part of Christmas eating as Pfeffernuesse and Lebkuchen.
This is no cake for a home baker to make. Special equipment is required in the form of a gas oven which provides a wall of flame back of the turning spit. The worker stands before the oven and dips a thin drizzle of the rich batter to the turning spindle which spreads and wraps it in a filmy veil.
Once, twice, the spindle revolves and the layer turns golden; another pouring of batter—and so the tree grows. Layer after layer is added, twenty to twenty-five filaments are baked on in this fashion until the cake measures about twelve inches through. Then the gas flame is extinguished, the spindle brought to rest, and the cake left overnight to cool and acquire firmness. Before removing from the spindle, the tree is brushed with an apricot glaze and then a white icing. Buy an entire tree and it will be decorated to order with macaroon strips and marzipan flowers. Cakes are made in sizes from 3 pounds up to 12 and are sold by mail, shipped to all parts of the country, price around ＄3 a pound.
To serve, set the tree upright and slice across, thin, thin! The cake is rich of butter and cream, but not overly sweet, which makes it a natural for serving with sherry and port.
Yorkville's marzipan headquarters is the Elk Candy Company, 240 East 86th Street. There the ground almond paste is molded into pears, apples, peaches, plums, all the fruits you can name and ditto for vegetables. Marzipan pigs, little pigs, mamma pigs, these for good luck. The chocolate kringles fill the window, ring- and heart-shaped.
It's an old-fashioned Christmas in the Rahmeyer store at 1022 Third Avenue. The Pfeffernuesse fills a broad-bellied barrel. Gingerbread oblongs are fronted by colorful cut-outs of Santa Claus, of angels and maidens. There are hearts of Lebkuchen, chocolate-frosted, and marzipan in many shapes and colors. Here is Spitzkuchen too, the German honey cake layered with a raspberry jelly, cut in small squares, and covered with chocolate.
Salted nuts, tin-packed, sealed against air, crisp and delicious, are the Lancaster Sun Tan. Maybe those nuts aren't the best we ever did eat, but at least for our money they are near the top of the heap. A United Nations combination of nuts: filberts from Turkey, cashews from India, big Brazil nuts from Brazil, almonds from California, pecans from Texas, and peanuts from Virginia.
The nuts are blanched first to remove their tight-fitted brown skins, then dry-roasted, next a brief dive into a caldron of hot peanut oil. From the oil boiler they are run to the processing bin equipped with a fan operation to draw out the heat. Here the salting is done and the nuts treated with a special dressing to keep their oils intact. Packaging follows immediately, and the nuts are shipped the same day as processed.
During the war these Lancaster, Pennsylvania nuts were stocked by post exchanges the wide world over. Put to the test, they proved to be perfect keepers for as long as six months. The Lancaster Salted Nut Company, thirty-three years in the business, have distribution east of the Rockies concentrated principally in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, New England, and Ohio. B. Altman, Fifth Avenue at 34th, is the New York City store handling the product. The nuts come in 1- and 2-pound tins, sun tan in color, holding mixed nuts plus peanuts at ＄1.60 a pound; a new tin, yellow-orange, indicates a mix without peanuts, this ＄2.19 a pound.
Candy-maker Blum of San Francisco turns to baking at the Christmas season to make fruitcakes and plum puddings for tens of thousands of people who think Christmas isn't Christmas without Blum's handiwork.
A treat—but really! Take the fruitcake —this is prepared with a fine vintage wine, the moisture sealed in by a process developed many years ago at the Blum plant. The cake contains less than 10 per cent flour, the rest fruit peels, fruits, nuts, and spices and so rich it should be served in the thinnest of slivers. The plum pudding is equally extravagant; moist, tender, rich, and aromatic. Pour brandy over, ignite, and present a masterpiece dancing with flames. The cake is made in 1-, 2-, and 3-pound sizes selling for ＄1.75 a pound. Puddings of 1 ½ pounds, ＄2.75, 2 ½ pounds, ＄5, 3 ½ pounds, ＄6.75, are wrapped in wax paper. There is a melon shape also, 2 pounds, ＄3.50, 3 pounds, ＄5. Available at all stores carrying the Blum products or write Blum's, San Francisco, California. In New York City, Lord and Taylor, Fifth Avenue at 38th, carry the items in their Blum shop, main floor.
Coffee, America's favorite breakfast beverage, is getting its flavor highlighted in a variety of new foods ranging from coffee-flavored milk, coffee-flavored soda, to coffee gelatin. Coffee flavor in candy is the current rave. Some of the new pieces are coffee hard centers, coffee creams, roasted coffee beans, these chocolate-dipped. The ground, roasted beans are used in cream fillings, in coffee pastilles, coffee nips, coffeeets.
Coffee concentrates are offered for flavoring in custards, ice creams, for fillings in pies, cakes, and éclairs. Coffee gelatin is the product of the Plymouth Rock Gelatin Company, located in Boston. The Poland Springs Company of Poland Springs, New Hampshire, is manufacturing coffee soda. A product catching on in the New England area is “Café Olay,” a milk drink made “peptivating” with a coffee concentrate. This is bottled like any milk, its color a pale coffee shade, its flavor like coffee when diluted half and half with whole milk. Coffee milk is made by several of the large New England dairies to deliver along their routes and to sell at fountains and groceries.
Some day try this coffee parfait created by New York's famous night club, the Copacabana, and served there to the lilting tune of “There's an Awful Lot of Coffee in Brazil.” For this, take little scoops of coffee ice cream to make layers in a tall parfait glass with glups of coffee cordial. And cordial they are, when you get these two together. The dark sweet liqueur boasting the concentrated coffee taste is called “Coffee Sport,” imported from the Virgin Islands by Jules Orteig, Ltd., selling in most New York liquor stores. At Sherry Wine and Spirits Company, 678 Madison Avenue, it retails ＄3.98 for four-fifths.
Pigskin is the social lion of winter for cocktail nibbling; it goes mighty well with beer. Pigskin is a first cousin to cracklings, but of more elegant manner. Bacon skins, that's what, fried tender, easy-crunching as a crisp chip of potato, not so hard and greasy as the cracklings selling in Harlem. Several firms are producing fried rind under various trade names, but “Rolets” is the one we find especially savory, made by the Rolet Company, 24 Bogart Street, Brooklyn, retailing 1 ¼ ounces for 10 cents at numerous New York markets.
These streamlined, tenderized cracklings can be used as a garnish to crumble over such soups as purée of green pea, bean soup, corn soup. Have them with succotash. Crumble to serve as a relish with curry.
Cheese gets together with bacon in a new spread fathered by the Borden Company, the five-ounce jars around 24 cents. This, like the other spreads in the Borden line, is in a graceful reuse glass.
The item is an outgrowth of a war-time cheese used in K rations, the only thing in the kit the men said they liked eating. A food capable of making friends with the armed forces must be worthwhile remembering for peacetime consumption, the Borden heads figured. Here it is restyled for the home table.
The bacon is ground, broiled, defatted, then blended with creamed processed Cheddar. A spread to use in sandwiches, or as cocktail nip on a cracker.
Beat the drums for the mustards of France, here from Dijon. Maison Glass, 15 East 47th Street, have them plain or tarragon-flavored, 4 ¼ ounces 40 cents.
Telburn's bright little shop at 161 East 53rd Street, specializing in “bees' knees” and “butterflies' eyebrows,” meaning about everything fancy, has dates steeped in rum and put up in honey and cognac. Rich, almost cloying if you eat them straight from the jar. But to eat over ice cream or a pudding —utter content! The price is ＄1.35 for a 10-ounce jar.
Another Telburn custom-built topping idea is almonds packed with an orange liqueur sweetened with honey. Dribble the sauce over a fruit salad, add a few of the nuts. Another item on the same style is the jar of hazelnuts brandy-scented, honey-blessed. Nut packs are ＄1.10 for the 6-ounce jar, that also goes for the fruit mélange in brandy with spices, 10 ounces. The fruits are a medley of pears, peaches, figs, apricots, prunes, a sweet bite with cold chicken, turkey, or lamb.