Food prejudices would be a lively subject for the psychiatrists. Recently we had a moment of repulsion on opening a tin labeled “Agaricus,” there beholding a flock of tiny rice birds, each no bigger than an infant sparrow. Heads off, feet gone, insides out, all tenderly cooked. Now why should the stomach have jumped so alarmingly? It can only be accounted for by the abnormal activity of the subconscious mind.
Heaven only knows the queer things we have eaten without the bat of any eyelash, eaten and enjoyed. There was bear steak for one thing, eels, for another, and kangaroo-tail soup, horse-meat stew, Chinese century-old eggs, broiled rattle-snake, birds-nest soup, and once to make good on a dare, a few forkfuls of a fried mess of angleworms. But those rice birds!
After swallowing twice we sampled and found them very good indeed, after artful preparation in the Chinese manner. Just as ginger leaves with snake meat add greatly to its delicacy, so is the sauce important with these little birds of the field.
A rare tidbit in China, the rice bird is served as an hours d'oeuvre thusly: Remove from the tin, sprinkle lightly with a hot sauce, and serve on very thin slices of Bermuda onion on Melba toast. To serve hot: Remove from the tin, heat in a double boiler, place in a dish garnished with shredded lettuce and scallions. Another method is to heat, then sauce with a mixture made of ¼ cup of dry port or sherry, ¼ cup of China Mandarin oyster sauce, à la chassour game sauce, or B.S. sauce, and 1/8 pound of butter. Thicken slightly, serve on a bed of cooked wild rice with a dash of paprika. Around the platter place pear slices alternately with orange rings, a ripe olive in the center of each.
For a cold luncheon the birds may be set in a wine aspic garnished with truffles and the white of hard-cooked egg. Sold by C. Henderson, 52 East 55th Street, the 10-ounce tins, about seven birds, $3.25.
Fortnum and Mason's, those eclectic merchants of London, long out of this market, are easing in again, sending two teas, an Earl Grey and a Lapsang souchong, at Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue.
From Germany Apollinaris water, the first postwar shipment, selling 35 cents a bottle or $4 a dozen, $16.25 for a case, waiting at Charles and Company.
A saucy set of sweet sauces from the Charlotte Charles Kitchen in Evanston, Illinois, are in leading nation-wide stores. Five in the set retail around $3.75. One, the brandied cherry, is an old-timer, this confected with maraschino cherries and a high voltage of brandy, styled originally to flame over plum pudding. Newest of the line is called the Black Horse, a thick molasses-colored sweetness that smells and tastes like root beer. Raspberry sauce is a smooth, thick substance, Burgundy red, but not so natural in flavor as others in the collection. The rum sauce is exquisite, that is to rum lovers. Smooth like thick cream, a dark amber color, dark rum the taste. Deceptively tranquil, yet we have a notion that a few spoonfuls of that might creep up on the uninitiated. This is a sauce for bathing the home-baked baba, to use in dousing the crêles. Peppermint, the fifth member, is thick, smooth, a vibrant green, one to use in making a parfait. Beat its green beauty into a cream, then layer the pastel-tinted fluff with vanilla ice cream in a tall glass, over the top a swish of plain sauce, and let it rove where it may.
A restyling job is being done on the marshmallow. Now it's made larger, made in a variety of flavors, then chocolate-covered. One of New York City's best marshmallow assortments sells mail order from the Schwartz shop, 131 West 72nd Street. Here the chocolate-covered softies are two inches square, made in five flavors—maple, rum, vanilla, banana, and cherry, the price ＄1.25 a pound, mail order $1.50, which includes packing and postage.
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