A month before Thanksgiving, and the smoked turkey production line gets into full swing for the winter season. After the dressing and an overnight bath in ice water, the birds are drained and sent to the pickling room. There they are immersed in a mixture of wine, vegetable juices, and herbs to remain at a temperature several degrees below freezing for ten days to two weeks. Smoking follows with hickory or applewood embers.
Get ready for a couple of yums and a few oo-la-las! Now off with the lid of the Day-Dean petit-four assortment, 40 pieces, 1 pound, packed in a pastel box, the price ＄3, a mail-order item, postage extra. The firm producing these good things is a combination of two of New York's oldest catering houses, one having its start in 1839, the other in 1893, and with both the petits fours were made a special art, each little piece constructed with proper loving care. Very good the rum fingers made of almond paste, flavored with rum, one half the finger dipped in sweet chocolate. Sample the chocolate macaroon ladyfingers. Try a shortcake ring sandwiched with jelly, decorated with pecans. Old-fashioned butter cookies are cut into small crescents and sprinkled thickly with chopped nuts, and more and more of the same, only each so different, at least 12 kinds in the box. Order this petit-four assortment from Day-Dean, 6 East 57th Street.
Home-kitchen bounty is offered by Shallowbrook Farm, Old Lyme, Connecticut, foods really homemade, made by Mrs. Gertrude Jewett Eno. Top-shelf notable is the spaghetti sauce, oily and rich, thick with coarsely chopped beef, with garden-fresh tomatoes, green peppers, onions, and little mushrooms. Spices, of course, but add your own garlic. A quart jar retails for ＄3 and serves four hearty eaters. You can't make your own any better.
Shallowbrook shad roe is an interesting product, four perfect pairs of whole roes, packed in a quart jar in the slightly salted water in which they were cooked, price ＄2.50. The roe is from Connecticut River shad, canned the day it is caught, to be broiled, baked, or served in any preferred way. We like it baked in herb-scented cream sauce made from the broth.
Muskmelon pickles are made from a Shallowbrook heirloom recipe, made with ripe, but not overripe, melon, peeled, thinly sliced, and cooked in a syrup tanged slightly with vinegar and made quite spicy, the flavor typical of the watermelon pickle. The muskmelon cooks down to a peach gold, tender but not crisp. For us, too many mustard seeds are loose in the sauce to stick in the teeth. One other point we find annoying, the syrup has a drool. Pick up a spoonful of the pickle and a long drizzle strings from the spoon. Nevertheless it's a pickle like no other pickle and perfect with chicken. Guests taste, then ask, what in the world?
Grape catsup, retailing ＄1 a pint, seems especially designed for the cold lamb. Yet it may be used in any way you would tomato catsup except on fried eggs. Grape is the color of this thin, runny stuff, sharp yet sweet, and powerfully spiced, with clove talking loudest.
The fourth item is smoked shad, not too smoked this, in big straggly pieces, excellent to lay over a cracker or on a bread finger for a cocktail snack. Lave it in cream sauce and dip over toast. ＄1.75 for 10 ounces of fish, enough, by the way, to fill a pint jar. To order, address Shallowbrook Farm, Old Lyme, Connecticut. Products will be shipped express collect.
A gift basket of the English Huntley and Palmer sweets can be ordered through various New York City stores to be filled in the firm's factory in Reading and delivered throughout England; and to countries on the Continent. The parcel offered contains a one-pound-six-ounce fruit cake, a one-pound-nine-ounce Dundee cake, both foil-wrapped, and a pound tin of shortcakes. The cost delivered in England is ＄3.50, the same package sent to France, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, or Switzerland is ＄4.25. If mailed to Russia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Spain, Jugoslavia, and Italy, the price is ＄5. Huntley and Palmer's delivery service thoroughly covers the United Kingdom, and as they have their own factory on the Continent, orders there get immediate delivery. Send checks to any of the following New York stores: B. Altman, R. H. Macy, and Bloomingdale, to Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue, or Maison Glass, 15 East 47th Street.
Green Pascal celery is beginning to give bleached white a run for the money. Like a sturdy young tree a bunch of this celery, big of stalk, bold in coloring, flaunting a topknot of leaves. Noisy to eat—the crackle is like stepping on a basket.
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