Then came a new lease on life. Always the Krakers' son James, Junior, has had his eye on the Hut as an idea to develop when he finished college. In 1942 he graduated from Cornell, but there was a war on and for three and a half years he served in the Navy air corps. Two years now James Junior is back and up to his eyes in the Cherry Hut business. The first idea he set going was the establishment of a jam and jelly kitchen to do a year-around selling job. The cherries are frozen as they come fresh-picked from the orchard, then used as needed. About 600 jars a day is the jam kitchen's production to keep up with mail orders. Now with stocks well ahead for the first time since the opening, the firm is branching out to sell through the stores. Marshall Field and Company's grocery in Chicago is the first to handle Cherry Hut items, B. Altman is first in New York City.
Examine a jar of the cherry preserves, the fruit is full and shapely, of good crimson color, of potent natural flavor. A clever way to point up its beauty is to layer these preserves over custard-filled tarts.
The sweet cherry conserve is too sweet for us but not for conserve lovers and not a whit sweeter than a good conserve should be. Orange, lemon, and pecan join with the fruit.
That cherry jelly brings fond memories of home. We had one sour cherry tree and what the birds and the youngsters didn't take was picked to make jelly, a jelly tender, clean-cutting, clear-sparkling, of delicate flavor.
If you wish, you may order direct from the Cherry Hut preserving kitchen, Beulah, Michigan, 3 jars gift-packed, ＄2.25; 12 preserves, ＄7.50; 12 jellies, ＄6.50; mixed, 6 jellies and 6 preserves, ＄7; mixed, 4 each of jam, jelly, and preserve, ＄7.50, all postpaid.
There's smoke in your mouth. If there isn't, there will be. Everywhere the smoked birds are roosting on platters. Turkey, capon, chicken, duck, pheasant, mallard are getting the spicy brine cure, then into the smoke fumes to be readied for winter party tables.
It was ten years ago that gourmets throughout the nation began breathing heavily over a new dish called the “smoked turkey.” The smoking was claimed to be a private art, known in this country to only three men. Others learned smoking in a hurry when they saw how the smoke-scented birds were catching on with the public. Today there are twenty or more firms claiming the smoke-it know-how.
Each processor has his own bag of tricks, one may smoke with apple embers, another with hickory, adding herbs for incense. One smoker we know sprays his birds with sherry before they go into the smoke. The formula for the brine cure that precedes the smoking treatment is something else on which smokers agree to disagree. Each claims his own way is an exclusive formula.
Gourmets sample, smack lips, and the arguments wage. Every eater, of course, to his own idea. This month we present still another smoked beauty to sample, the Valley Forge Farms turkey from Lloyd W. Steelman's place at Lansdale, Pennsylvania.
Steelman has turned poultry-farming into big business, operating one of the largest mail-order chicken firms in the East. It was four years ago that he decided to smoke the big bird. He hired Monsieur Albert Mathis, an expert French chef, to develop the processes for pickling and smoking. Six different methods were tried, and the finished birds judged by guests called in from four surrounding counties. The public's first choice was the method accepted.
Immediately these birds became popular, and orders multiplied like a chain letter. Today Valley Forge Farms (the Lansdale unit) is raising, processing, and shipping 10,000 smoked turkeys annually into 43 states, Alaska, Bermuda, and Canada. The business is handled almost entirely by mail, the price ＄1.50 a pound, express prepaid anywhere in the United States.
Mr. Steelman, too, has his secret with the cure but, generally speaking, he says, it is the careful control of every factor influencing the quality and flavor of the turkey meat from the egg to the dressed bird that gives the fancy results. He breeds his own turkeys, the hatching scheduled so that the birds are matured in groups, one flock for Thanksgiving, one for Christmas, one for Easter. Each turkey requires around eighty pounds of high-grade feed to bring it to maturity. One month before the killing the birds go on a special finishing diet of grain, mash, and condensed milk to give the flesh an extra-sweet flavor.
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