Right to the heart is Cupid's aim when his arrow is tipped with the newest valentine sweet styled by Ellen Simon, the candy artist. The novelty of the season is a fondant heart wearing a question mark or bearing a personal love message or “her” monogram—(entwined with yours if you dare). Or, pop the question, let the billet-doux bid “Name the day.”
Hearts come in three styles. Tiny ones, an inch long, made in pink and white for after-dinner service or to carry out the heart theme at a valentine buffet, ＄1.75 a pound. Hearts, if you like, may be inscribed with the initials of the hostess or the honored guest, one initial, ＄3 a pound, two initials, ＄4 a pound. Large hearts two inches long are initialed on order, otherwise they come inscribed with the question mark, packed four to a see-through acetate box, the price 75 cents. Individual hearts plump as pincushions, four inches long, three inches across, sell individually boxed, price 75 cents.
Ellen's “Sweethearts” are available in New York City at B. Altman, and at Ellen's own little retail store which she runs in connection with her factory at 164 East 91st Street.
If your valentine is an old-fashioned girl, maybe your mother, nothing could please her more than Ellen's old-fashioned assortment of chocolate creams, ＄2 a pound, packed in one-, two-, and three-pound boxes. Like the precious old valentines of the elegant eighties, the chocolates are reminiscent of the muted music of the minuet. Violet cream is there, and rose cream, to stir the heart with memories. Other creams are flavored with mint, vanilla, lemon, orange, coffee, all hand-dipped in a bitter-sweet cooking chocolate. The coconut cream tastes exactly as if made with fresh coconut, soft, tender the shreds, pre-cooked in a syrup before being added to the filling. All the fruit flavorings used are the pure oils, the vanilla a pure vanilla extract used along with a little of the bean. The maple cream is made with maple sugar and a secret dash of coffee flavoring to lift that too heavy sweetness of maple into a class by itself.
Latest pride of the factory is Ellen's Famous Twelve. This assortment contains the most popular pieces of her entire line, by name: rum prunes and cherries, coffee beans, chocolate-dipped, thin mints, cream mints, chocolate-covered orange and lemon peels, plain chocolate squares, an assortment of the old-fashioned creams, and her most famous, the caramel surprise. The box is divided into eleven trays and fitted over the candy is a sheet of cellophane, this inscribed with the name of each piece contained in the tray. Something there to everyone's liking. Ellen has new box paper this season, done in pink, also a light blue, and a beige with an allover design of New York landmarks. Famous Twelve is carried by the following New York shops and in some fifty other cities wherever Ellen's chocolates are sold: B. Altman, Fifth Avenue and 34th Street, Bloomingdale, 59th Street and Lexington Avenue, Fleischman Florist, 14 Wall Street, Zitomer Chemist, 25 Central Park West, Eclair, Inc., 141 West 72nd Street and at 54th Street and First Avenue, Ellen's Retail Shop, 164 East 91st Street.
Sweet valentine for your one-and-only would be a candy-club subscription providing a box of sweetmeats, each one different for each month of the year, except June, July and August; the candies mailed direct from nine of America's leading confectioners. Each box has been chosen by Elsa Maxwell, the famous party-giver, queen of entertainment, who made her choice from the offerings submitted by hundreds of the nation's top-rating sweet specialists. The subscription price is ＄17.50, representing the retail cost of the candies plus postage, handling, and insurance. A second subscription plan is for six months instead of nine, ＄11.75, and a third provides candy for three months only, this at ＄6. In this instance the donor has the privilege of designating dates on which he wants the boxes mailed. Address your orders to the Candy of the Month Club, 910 Ambassador Building, St. Louis 1, Missouri.
North Michigan's red-cherry country has a trio of products for Washington's Birthday. There's a cherry preserve, a conserve, a jelly. Each as fine of its kind as could ever be made, “Cherry Hut” reads the label.
In 1925 a Mr. and Mrs. Kraker, fruit-growers of the North Crystal Lake area, opened a roadside stand. Their idea was not so much to make money as to advertise cherries and the good ways to put the cherry to work in tarts, pies and jellies. Their stand wasn't just another way-side knick-knack joint, no soft drinks, cigarettes, or candy bars; they sold only cherry products, cherry pies in particular. College girls were hired to run the Hut summers and the girls baked the pies under Mrs. Kraker's guidance; they waited on tables, sold the jams and jellies, and the place prospered for a period of years. Business dwindled sadly during the war.
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.
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.
That green celery delivers a wallop in eating pleasure. It is tender, it breaks with a snap, few strings to remove, the hearts are like clubs, the leafy top is useful for soups and stews. All this is minor to flavor. Crunch a bite; vibrant of juice, it fills the mouth with a sweet nutty richness. The butts are good sliced wafer-thin, salted and peppered, the texture remindful of the Chinese water chestnut. In cooking don't use as much of this celery as you do of the bleached, or the flavor's overpowering.
Pascal celery can be purchased trade-marked “Andy Boy,” window-box-packed by the D'Arrigo brothers, Andrew and Stephen, operating from California. This celery is handled with the greatest of care. After cutting, it is immersed immediately in 34-degrees-cold water to take out the field heat and loosen the dirt. It is trimmed, jet-spray-washed, dried under blowers, cellophane-wrapped, and into the package. No hand touches the product until it's safe in your kitchen. Packaging is done at the coldest possible temperature workers can stand to decrease the rate of the celery's breakdown. The boxed vegetable is packed in crates, stored in a refrigerated vault until loaded into refrigerator cars for the cross-country trip.
If Pascal isn't in your local stores, the Green Brothers, 12th and Wazee, Denver, Colorado, pack it to sell by mail at ＄3.55 for an enormous bunch of eight to nine stalks delivered any place in the United States from November through February. The celery has a delicate nutty taste, the stems tender, absolutely without strings.
United Nations headquarters for the cheeses is in the Public Market, 230 East 10th Street, New York City, Phil Alpert's stand, with a collection of over three hundred varieties including cheese from forty countries and from thirty-five of the forty-eight states in the Union.
Here are the cheese types one finds only in off-the-trail foreign sections, kinds like Polish Warzawski, Turkish Kajmak, Spanish Fontine, Russian Travnick, Greek Kasseri, the Roumanian Kascaval, Norwegian Gjetost, Hungarian Brinza. There you can find almost any cheese you desire—the French Calvados, the old-fashioned Bierkäse, a Nova Scotia Cheddar given the sturgeon smoke treatment. There's a Vermont “rat” cheese, meaning a well-aged Cheddar that bites back at the tongue.
“A lesson in geography,” Phil Alpert told us with a wave of his hand. As a result of going global with cheese Mr. Alpert has become something of a linguist. “I can talk cheese in nine languages,” he said. “I love cheese, it's my life, it's my hobby.”
Phil Alpert has loved cheese since he went to work as an errand boy at the age of twelve in 1926 in an East Side grocery. Those little bites he snitched from the big Cheddar kept under the glass dome tasted like heaven and decided this boy to make cheese his business. He finds it a ceaseless passion. After the market doors close Alpert stays a few hours to experiment with cheese blends, his pride a Cheddar creamed and blended with brandy. Cheeseman Alpert carries on a vast correspondence with cheese-makers in all parts of the country. In the past five years he has written the chambers of commerce of most of the larger cities to ask for the names of outstanding cheese-makers in their area. When he gets the name of a likely place he orders a sampling. This winter he is starting a mail-order business. Write to Phil Alpert, 230 West 10th Street Market, New York City; tell him about that cheese you like and can't find. By return mail you will receive a chunk of the same—or something very reasonably a facsimile.