Salad dressings flock to town from the inns of the countryside. Some sell through the stores, others go traveling by mail. One we are proud to recommend is a dressing, tangy and different, from the Old Riverton Inn, Riverton, Connecticut, where salad-bowl service is a day-by-day feature. It's just help yourself. Now try the orange-tinted dressing, a real palate-thriller. The dressing is on the thick side, made with pure olive oil, with a wine vinegar, with fresh lemon juice, and garden-fresh tomatoes, a broad hint of garlic. It does its best with the greens. Add a bit of finely cut onion and coarsely ground pepper and serve with the avocado. It teams nicely with shrimp or other sea food. Fold it spoonful by spoonful into whipped cream for blush-pink dressing to bedeck a fruit salad.
Guests of the inn have been buying the dressing for several years now, a few jars at a time, some ordering by mail. A courtesy service, this wrapping up bottles, a service which all on its own grew into a business. Now this paprika-colored dressing is packed commercially but still made in small batches, selling in New York City at B. Altman, Fifth Avenue at 34th Street, and Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue, the 16-ounce bottle ＄1.25, or order by mail direct from the Riverton kitchen.
Another salad dressing going places by mail is the Cay-Lime, more like a sauce than a French dressing. It's a stuff thicker than thin, sweeter than tart, soul mate to fruit. We would like the sauce as a base for a barbecue dressing to be stepped up with pepper. The vegetable oil, heavy in oil, is slightly sharpened and flavored with the juice of the little Key limes. Ketchup in the mix, a few drops of Worcestershire, a good pinch of sugar, a medley of spices. Order from Campbell-Burns, Inc., Dept. G9, Kennebunkport, Maine, three 8-ounce bottles shipped prepaid, ＄1.65; no C.O.D.'s, please.
Yale Barn down on the farm near Canaan, Connecticut, serves the best food in “that neck of the woods.” Folks drive for miles for their Farm Supper Thursday evenings; the promise—all you can eat for a flat ＄2. Braised oxtails in Burgundy sauce, for one thing. Another, the sweet-sour beef made with the tips cut from sirloin steaks, and don't miss the lobster cakes buried under shrimp sauce. Other nights than Thursday the meals cost more, but never too much, not for food that good.
The restaurant is a remodeled barn divided into a main dining room of native pine, a bamboo room in a tropical setting, a patio enclosed by a green hedge with pond and splashing water wheel for hot days. Right this way to the balcony, the gourmet's paradise, where rare foods are gathered from all over the world. Rarest of the lot originated in the Yale Barn kitchen, a salad dressing superb, postpaid ＄1.50 a pint. The dressing is made with corn oil, with tomato, with vinegar, with herbs and spices no end; a haunting suggestion of garlic. Light tomato in color, sharp, but not too sharp to be pleasing on fruit.
Another mail-order item is the orange jelly—deep amber the color—made with orange concentrate. A firm jelly, tender and not overly sweet, the 12-ounce jar, 50 cents. While you are ordering, might as well get the old-hickory-smoked slat of the smoked ham flavor for ＄1. Send check or money order, no C.O.D.'s, if you please. Address the Yale Barn, Canaan, Connecticut.
Linzer Torte in the tender-bud stage, fresh from the oven of a Viennese kitchen, goes traveling by mail, traveling in a round tin sprigged with rosebuds, a cake to serve ten, price ＄2.50 postpaid. This has a rich cookie type of dough, born of ground almonds, of flour, egg yolks, and sugar, a wee pinch of cocoa, a trickle of brandly, the rind of a lemon, cinnamon and cloves for the spicing. The thickly rolled pastry is fitted into a straight-sided pie pan, then the filling added, a pure raspberry jam. Dough strips form a latticework topping. Now into a hot oven, maybe five minutes, quickly to brown; then the heat is reduced and the pastry slowly dried. The rich, tender crust is just sturdy enough to carry the weight of the jam.
Viennese cookies are made also by the same clever cook to sell boxed by the pound, 74 small morsels of sweetness, ＄2.75 postpaid. Lift the box lid, those thin squares with scalloped edges are the spiced wafers, rich little nothings that leave the prick of spice on the tongue—cinnamon, cardamom, coriander. Spice cookies are baked in nut molds, the exact size of English walnuts, and brushed lightly with white icing. Butter cookies are leaf-shaped, also cut in clover-leaf pattern, these tickled with egg yolk to give a golden hue. Tiny sticks made of dates, raisins, nuts all finely ground, highly spiced with cinnamon and ginger, are rolled in powdered sugar, wrapped in silver foil.
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