In the Balkans where this milk food has been used for long centuries it was fermented by a process of nature, by a bacteria known as Bacillus bulgaricus. The scientists after long research isolated the souring agent and thereafter the culture could be made in the laboratory. It was then that the new milk food was introduced into France.
Originally it was sold by the pharmacists only on a doctor's recommendation. But the French soon discovered yogurt's good eating qualities, and factories were established to make it in volume to meet the demand. Before the war it was selling in virtually every European city.
One of the important makers was the Dannon Company of Paris which, the year the war started, was turning out around 80,000 5 ½-ounce jars of yogurt a day, both fruited and plain. Daniel Carasso, son of the firm's founder, transferred the business here in 1942. Now the product so carefully made in a modern laboratory factory in Long Island City has created a Manhattan boom in the consumption of this tart milk custard. Possibly the internationalizing influence of the United Nations personnel has had something to do with the rush of business. When the Assembly was still in session the United Nations Cafeteria sold 300 jars of yogurt a day. United Nations or not, yogurt is selling in unheard-of volume in some 2,000 outlets in the metropolitan New York area with a special route coverage through New Jersey and Westchester. Now plain platinum-blonde yogurt will be seen everywhere with its sister, the daring strawberry blonde.
Holland prepares a ham similar to the Westphalian and has sent a shipment to this country. It's a ham long-cured, not cooked, to be eaten as is, sliced very, very thin. We like it spread with cream cheese, sprinkled with chives, to team with cocktails. Price $2.95 a pound at Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue. Another Dutch offering is turkey boned, rolled, and tied like a rib roast, then baked. Slice thin and serve as an hors d'oeuvre or a cold-plate special. Dark and light meat are in separate rolls—the light $3.95 a pound, dark $3.25, or half and half (attractive on a plate) $3.50.
Butter-iced breakfast buns are announced by the Arnold Bakers of Port Chester, New York, the eighth item in their growing line of home-style breads and rolls. A rich yeast dough for the buns, with little chips of candied orange peel here and there. Lots and lots of butter, fresh egg yolks, pure vanilla bean. A dozen small buns lightly frosted are packaged in a colorful box with full-view cellophane window, 33 cents a dozen at the Gristedes, Grand Union, and A & P chains, and at scores and scores of markets in fourteen states from Portland, Maine, south into Virginia.
Fancy honeys come again to the store shelves. One of the largest collections of unusual state honeys, over twenty kinds, is seen at Hettie Hamper's Honey House, 671 Lexington Avenue, New York City. Honeys are there which haven't been packed since the early years of the war, honeys from the South, New York State, the Middle West, the far West.
California sends the tamarack, eucalyptus, manzanita, the creamy blue curls, and the dark strong cactus. Arizona is there with mesquite; Oregon with her strong hairy vetch. Sourwood is up from Gatlinburg. Tennessee. North Carolina sends a pine honey and a queer one called “purple”; huckleberry provides the nectar for this. Michigan has an original in milkweed and wild raspberry; a thin honey, winelike in flavor, only vaguely sweet, redolent of raspberries. New York State honeys are the purple loose strife and wild thyme from the Catskills. Purple loose strife has a greenish-gold cast, thinnish, a honey with sharp undertones.
Wild thyme is a thick honey delicately herbal. Sheep brought to the Catskills from Greece, where they had grazed on the thyme-covered slopes of Mount Hymettus, carried the herb seed in their wool to scatter over new pastures. So it is that United States bees harvest the “nectar of the gods.” a honey identical to that known in the days of Marathon and Salamis.
Creamy blue curls has the consistency of hard sauce, the same yellow-white color, with a faint raspberry flavor. Goldenrod is an odd one, pale gold, thick as soft butter, tasting like the smell of the flower stem when it's broken, acrid but pleasant. Heartsease is reminder of autumn after the first frost. A taste of drying leaf, of lingering flower, of ripening grape. Frugal in its sweetness, lacking that wanton way of the nectars of summer.
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