This style-conscious summer even the baba adopts a new look, gets a new flavor. Here from California are babas traveling four to a tin, built like Mary Anns with a depression in the center to hold whipped cream or ice cream, or dip in the fresh fruit. The only preparation required is to turn the tin upside down for ten minutes before opening to allow the syrup collected in the bottom to drip back over the cakes. After opening, arrange the syrup-soaked sweets on dessert plates, one to a portion, and decorate to your fancy.
The babas come sauced in two flavors. One is peppermint-scented, a proper base for ice cream, then hot chocolate sauce. One comes flavored with curaçao, the orange-tinctured liqueur; try this served with a soft custard or whipped cream and fresh strawberries. Dark, glossy brown these French cakes, tender of texture, moist of the syrup in which they are packed.
Ask for the La Ville brand, made by Bertauche of San Anselmo, California, selling in New York City at Vendome Table Delicacies, 415 Madison Avenue, among other spots. Tin of four, 85 cents.
It's the same Vendome, in its off-premises grog shop right next door to the headquarters for table delicacies, that is cooperating in an experiment with wine expert Frank Schoonmaker. There has been recent talk among the distributors about the need for more of the in-expensive wines, more vins ordinaires, if America is going to develop as a wine-drinking nation. If there were more wines that cost about the same as beer, the average consumption would multiply manyfold.
For those interested in trying a mixed case, Vendome offers a sampler assortment of a dozen bottles at the special price of $11.90. For the twosomes, there is a “baby” case of a dozen half-bottles for $6.50. Each case contains reds and whites and offers an excellent cross section of what leading American wine-growers are producing today. Mail orders will be accepted for expressing anywhere in New York State. To Westchester and Long Island the store will pay the expressage, but to other points in the state, express charges are extra.
Ring cake circling a flowering rose tree is the different idea sponsored by Robert Day-Dean's, caterers to New York society weddings, and offered mail order. The 15-inch bride's cake is made in ring form, decorated in the formalized style of the wedding band. With the cake goes a wire tree to fit the center of the ring, this to be flower-trimmed. The flowers may be of your choosing, but white or sweetheart roses or lilies of the valley are the most used. The cake costs $22.50, the wire stand $2; address your order to Robert Day-Dean's, 6 East 57th Street, New York City.
Rings aren't to your liking? This venerable firm will ship you any type of cake, square or round, one tier or three tiers, light or dark fruit beautifully decorated; the bridal figures sent separately to place tiptop. Don't worry that the cake will be marred en route. This house has a special packing technique used through the years that insures their fragile creations safe journey anywhere.
BACK IN TOWN:
Pamper the palate with the smoked breast of the Hungarian goose, heavily smoked. Slice it thin, serve it cold on fingers of dark bread spread thick with sweet butter, pass with cocktails. The breast is pink-meated, fine-textured, the flavor reminiscent of the once-upon-a-time Westphalian ham, price $3.50 a pound, whole breast averaging 1 ½ to 2 pounds. No refrigeration is needed. Sold by Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue, New York.
Waiting at Charles' is Bass and Company's pale ale, bottled in London; also George Younger's Scotch stout, brewed and bottled in Scotland, and Scotch ale, all 39 cents a bottle.
Back comes the Schweppes line, this on the shelves at the R. H. Macy Grocery. See what we see: the lime juice cordial, the orange and lemon squashes, the sugarless ginger ale, the inimitable ginger beer. Again Macy's have their Marceau brand of French pâté de foie gras, the first in five years, packed in five sizes. Here's the Marceau brand of truffles, fine as any ever packed to send out of France.
The heavy, rich, and extremely aromatic Mocha-Java coffee can be found again. Wanamaker's have it in their New York and Philadelphia stores in three grinds, all-purpose, drip, and steel-cut, 75 cents a pound.
Bell Bates, 44 Dey Street, New York, sell the genuine Arabian Mocha from the province of Yemen, 59 cents a pound, mail order if you wish. Something else to consider is their superb jasmine tea of the exquisite fragrance at $2.50 a pound. Postage is extra on these two.
Mulligatawny paste arrives from British India under the Peacock label of the Bombay firm of P. Vencatachellum Company, selling in New York at TelBurn 161 East 53rd Street, $2.50 a pound. What in tunket? A stuff like curry paste. made with the same ingredients but in varying proportions; tamarind the plus item to give the big flavor difference. Use the product in the making of curries as a flavoring for soups and meat dishes. The Major Grey and the Colonel Skinner chutneys are on the TelBurn shelves; also that much sought-after Nepal pepper and the Tapp sauce out of Madras.
A eulogy as long as your arm should be written to Deming's extra-fancy Royal Yukon Chinook Salmon making its grocery-store debut. It's a salmon extra fancy, it's boneless, it's rich in natural oil and has a fine mellow flavor, a bright pink color, soft-textured with large meaty flakes—a salmon for those who want the finer things for their table.
The Chinook, king of salmon, is used for this pack, and only those fish which weigh around fifty pounds taken from the far northern Yukon River and carefully selected for prime condition.
So delicate the fish, the tins must have gentle treatment or the flesh will be broken. Great precaution is used in the shipping, each can packed upright, wrapped in tissue paper to ease the bumps of the journey. Cases are kept right side up and dealers are warned to “handle with care.” The salmon comes in 15 ½-ounce tins, enough for four servings or two cups of salmon, the price ranging from $1.15 to $1.35, at the following shops: Hammacher Schlemmer, 145 East 57th Street; Hunter's Food Market, 1226 Lexington Avenue; William Poll, 1120 Lexington Avenue; United Farms, 72 University Place; Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue; R. H. Macy, Herald Square; and the Gristede stores.
Deming and Gould, leaders in the salmon-packing field, keep their researches busy developing new packaging ideas. Sam-O-Lets, their newest, boasts the first great improvement in salmon-canning in twenty-five years. This pack is of keta, a light meat species prepared by a new process which removes the skin and backbone of the fish, giving a pack tender and delicate and of better appearance. Keta is the salmon preferred by Alaskan fishermen, so excellent its flavor. Sam-O-Lets are less expensive than the fancy deep pink Chinook, yet may be used in all the same ways. It turns from the tin in a near little mold, to be served in this fashion or used in lumps for a salad, shredded for sandwiches, and in casserole dishes. Dudley and Weisl, Inc., of 100 Hudson Street, New York City, are the Eastern distributors.
Dean of the homemade candy makers was Miss Emma Brun, sixty years making candy in her kitchen on Manhattan Island. Fabulous her caramels, small dark chocolate squares, to lie like velvet softly in a corner of the cheek, melting to cream in the mouth. And no wonder! To every eight pounds of candy one pound of butter, one quart of cream. And cream loaded the Brun fudge, made with white and medium-brown sugar, the brown to give the slight grain. The salted nuts she guaranteed perfect.
We interviewed Miss Brun on her eightieth birthday when she was still making candy. “What do you think of all these modern candy stores, mirrored, bronze-fitted, moving into your neighborhood?” we asked this dark akimbo sort of woman. “Oh!” she said, “those!” nodding her head in the direction of Madison Avenue's latest pink-plush-quilted candy emporium, “It's cream and butter that counts with candy more than fancy make-up.”
During the last few years of Emma Brun's life she shared her shop with cake-baker Martha Roche, maker of New York's famous Palm Beach layer cake, the one domed in a snowfall of fresh grated coconut. When Emma died a few years ago, she left her recipes to Martha, her friend. The Brun candies and the fine salted nuts are made now by Mrs. Roche and sold under the Brun name. The candies are made only to order, the price $2 a pound, salted almonds $2.50, and the mixed nuts $2, postage extra. Address the Palm Beach Cake Kitchen, 40-40 Northern Boulevard, Long Island City, New York.
Titivating to the palate those cocktail mushrooms, tiniest of the “pixie umbrellas,” packed in a highly seasoned tart sauce of oil sharpened with vinegar; similar as peas in a pod and ever so tender. The miniature cocktail onion is running mate to the mushrooms, these packed in oil, highly seasoned. Handled by B. Altman and other specialty shops in Manhattan; mushrooms ＄1, cocktail onions 79 cents for the 8-ounce jar, packed by C. J. Introvigne and Son of West Springfield, Massachusett.
A third item from this firm is a finely grated Italian-style cheese blend of Parmesan type, fresh and sharply flavored, very dry. It comes packed in a reuse jar, 4 ounces 42 cents, 2 ounces 29 cents, selling in the same shops with the mushrooms and onions.
Motta of Milano, Italy, is exporting again their fine candies, cakes, marron products, and the preserved fruits in mustard. Candy fanatics cheer the chocolate piece called the ginduia, a truffle of sorts made with cocoa and sugar and finely ground hazelnuts. Smooth to the tongue as the touch of peeled peaches.
The Motta nougat arrives in a variety of flavors, some blocks with almonds, other pieces with pistachio, others littered with filberts. A brittle nougat, but a bite in the mouth melts almost on the instant and without the least chew. Other sweets in the line are fondants, jellies, creams, marzipan, and don't overlook the excellent hard candies.
Panettone by Motta's is the only cake of this type made in Italy for export. The firm sends this high-humped sweet loaf traveling the world. A self-risen sweet bread with keeping qualities unbelievable, staying fresh in its double paper wrapper four to six months. A most rich affair whose ingredients, fresh sweet butter, sugar, eggs, flour, and fruits are added bit by bit at various stages of a 36-hour preparation. Sultana raisins, citron, and peels are sprinkled in generously, never the candied cherries so commonly used by Italian bakers in the States. Vanilla and lemon to flavor the cake, but it's the butter from Lombardy that gives the distinctive sweet richness.
Panettone was once a Christmas cake only, but Motta's have promoted it for year-round use, and in Milan it is eaten commonly as a breakfast sweet with coffee. It is served with wine any time; a great favorite for the picnic. Another cake exported by this house is Dolce Paradiso, a rich pound loaf with cherries and almonds, chocolate-frosted. Pound blocks sell for around $2. A cake made with egg yolks, fresh butter, wrapped in foil which keeps it moist and sweet for many weeks.
Fruits in mustard is a Noah's Ark of fruits, these cut in halves, quartered, or left whole, sauced in their own thin syrup, made hot with fresh ginger and horseradish root and enough English mustard to make a chest poultice. Huddled together in hot conspiracy are pears, green figs, tangerines, plums, citron, green almonds, cherries, peaches, orange, and apricots. A delectable relish to accompany boiled beef.
Those eclectic in their tastes must have a look at the Motta marrons, large, tender, each chestnut perfect. To prepare for marrons glacés the nuts are soaked in a sugar solution until saturated with sweetness, then packed in the syrup.
Puréed glacéed chestnuts, Marronita the name, is a dark, thick paste with dozens of uses in Italian and French kitchens. This is to be thinned with sherry or brandy for saucing the pudding. It mixes with whipped cream and may be used for topping desserts, for the filling in refrigerator cakes. Pear Marronita is a typical Italian dessert made with the purée: Place ice cream in a glass dish, over this a half pear, hollow side down. Cover with Marronita diluted with sherry or brandy, add dots of whipped cream.
The marrons, the whole ones in vanilla syrup, also in rum, the puréed, the glacéed glamour fruits in mustard, all the Motta brand, are handled in New York City by Bloomingdale Brothers at Lexington Avenue and 59th Street. The Dolce Paradiso is at Vendome Table Delicacies, 415 Madison Avenue, and at Gimbels, Broadway and 33rd Street. Manganari Brothers, Inc., 488 Ninth Avenue and the Trinacria Company, 415 Third Avenue, have the panettone. The candies can be spotted in dozens of the New York tony food bazaars, but specifically at Hicks', 37 West 57th Street. Motta's delicacies are selling also in leading delicacy shops in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Philadelphia, Washington, D. C., Boston, and Miami.
Chocolate brownies, strewn with hazelnut halves, cut finger-length, are packed end up in tins for overseas shipment. Handy Andies for times you need a sweet bite in a hurry to pass with coffee or tea to the drop-in caller. This brownie is on the cake side, not so moist and chewy or rich as the homemade, but good for all that. It's selling at the Brass Rail Food Shop, 521 Fifth Avenue.