Onion soup with wine, not one wine but two, sherry and Chablis, is the soup news of autumn, the packer Moore and Company, 137 Beekman Street, New York, a kitchen long famous for soups made with big Caribbean turtle. It's no easy trick canning wine with the onion—but pleasing results, with a special type of Spanish onion, sweet and delicate of aroma. These onions are sliced in thin rings, about 120 pounds to 50 gallons of stock and fried golden in butter, the very best butter. The stock is made on the sweet side, of marrow bones, with turtle meat, with some twenty seasonings. When ready for canning, imported sherry and Chablis are added to the broth, added according to formula but double-checked by taste test, as wines will very and onions, too, have wide difference in flavor. The Chablis wine has a duty to perform. Its job is to encourage the flavor of the sherry.
Float on the surface of this onion soup a small raft of buttered toast laden with Parmesan and then slid under the broiler until the cheese melts. Great medicine for a flagging spirit! Moore's onion soup, “Bon Vivant” brand, can be ordered through Hammacher Schlemmer, 145 East 57th Street, the 13-ounce tin 30 cents or a dozen tins for ＄3.50; a 35-ounce size 70 cents or a dozen tins for ＄8.25.
A pet of ours—Bellows' Gourmets' Bazaar, 67 East 52nd Street, New York. No crowding of the delicacies; in fact, the stock is rather limited, comparatively speaking. Only the finest of merchandise. Here we find glacé cherries without artificial flavor put up in a sugar-syrup to use as a garnish for puddings and cakes, 14-ounce jars, ＄1.25. Last call is now to the holiday cake bakers. Bellows have diced fruits mixed with diced citron, 14 ounces for 70 cents—you will look far to find better. Bellows fruits in brandy make an exquisite dessert. Every fig, peach, and nectarine individually selected, then matured in old brandy. A trifle potent. But most good eaters can carry a couple of platefuls.
What we especially want to tell you about is the new tea sampler, nine kinds in a tin box, 1 ounce of each, the price ＄1.75 for the lot. Each tea is at its zenith of power and perfection. By name: Darjeeling, Earl Grey, Lapsang, Formosa ooling, the Marco Polo blend made with Keemuns, a Buckinghouse blend of Ceylons, and still another Ceylon combination, the Regents blend. Taste, then sip, try one tea against another. Learn the one you like best; each of the nine also sells by the pound.
Winter promises well. Crawfood Norris, importer of the Frank Cooper line of English marmalades and fresh fruit preserves, has received the Oxford marmalade again, made by a recipe handed down from the seventies. Seville oranges for this, pure sugar only, no flavoring, no gelatin, the peel hand-cut. It's a marmalade aged to give body and rich, mellow flavor. After the initial boiling, the stuff is allowed to stand for months in specially cooled vaults to blend the juices and oils. Not until the peel is soft and the full orange tang developed, is the marmalade packed in the small earthenware jars. Like good wine, it keeps for long years.
Again the Oxford vintage, this a 1943-pack marmalade for the connoisseur, made only in vintage crop years, matured four to five seasons. The vintage year preceding this was 1933. These marmalades have deeper color, better body, greater richness than the usual year-by-year run. They cost more, too, as becomes a vintage product, the price around ＄1 for a proud crock.
Cooper's fresh-fruit preserves are in the stores, strawberry, black currant, black cherry, raspberry. The strawberries used are selected from the best English gardens, picked, then cooked the same day. The black heart cherry is the one Cooper preserves, the one generally grown on the north wall of an old-fashioned garden, carefully stoned, then preserved whole. Too often a black currant preserve is a mere travesty of the name. Not so with Cooper's. This is a preserve of rare quality, of whole fruit and full flavor. Ask for these items in the delicacy shops of your nearest big city.
More good news: Carr and Company have resumed shipment of their English biscuits, packed in soldered tins as in the prewar years. Coming are the water biscuits, Petit Beurre, Maries, shortcakes, ginger nuts, custard cream, and one called Nice, also the British assortment. Seen around New York at Hammacher Schlemmer, 145 East 57th Street; Maison Glass, 15 East 47th Street; Vendome Table Delicacies, 415 Madison Avenue; Martin's, 1042 Madison Avenue.
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