Maurine Cotton introduces the gaufrette to America, making it here as he made it before the war in his factore in Lyons, where it was baked by the hundreds of dozens to sell throughout France. Here Mr. Cotton started his business in a pocket-sized shop, helpers three, wife, daughter, and son. His first machine was his own design, and eight-griddle affair, revolving full circuit once every two minutes, just the time it takes to bake a waffle to honey-brown tones.
Six years ago, the Cotton factory considered it a good day's work to turn out 600 gaufrettes. Now it boasts 60,000 as daily production. Since October, Lucien Poirier has come in as a firm partner, handling sales and expanding retail outlets. The wafers are selling in New York City at Maison Glass, 15 East 47th Street, Hicks and Sons, 660 Fifth Avenue, and John Wanamaker's. But ask in the delicacy stores of your city. Distribution soon will be national, ＄1.15 to ＄1.50 a box for 50 gaufrettes.
When a great coffee merchant blends a coffee for his personal delight, you have coffee for the connoisseur. Yuban, known as America's “guest coffee,” because one given guests the best, was blended originally by the coffee king John Arbuckle, of the famous Arbuckle Coffee House. It Was Blended for his personal enjoyment and served only at the Arbuckle table and to an inner circle of friends. Everyone who tasted begged to buy, and after a few years the Arbuckles were persuaded to put the coffee on the market. Today it sells nationally. There are other coffee brands sold locally in various cities which have their ardent followers among discriminating people, but no other coffee is offered nationally which has so many admirers among coffee enthusiasts.
The coffees used in the blend and not available in constantly sufficient quantities to keep up with demand. Also these special coffees cost more than the average run, which means higher prices, Stores are carefully screened, and only those with a cream-in-the-cup clientele are chosen to handle Yuban. It is Vacuum-packed in 1-pound tins in three grinds, drip, regular, and pulverized for the glass coffee-makers, the price ranging from 65 to 70 cents a pound. The coffee brews dark, heavy of body, rich in its distinctive flavor, a fragrant bouquet as of coffee freshly ground. A coffee that has all the necessary virtues to make the drinker feel that no matter what the price, Yuban offers a bargain in pleasure and satisfaction.
Curry in a wink when made with that new, prepared curry sauce, its recipe out of Old India, brewed by the Bird and Bottle Inn of Garrison, New York. A sauce yellow-brown, thick as a puree, a blending of onions, celery, carrots, green peppers, parsley, apples, and raisins. Garlic is in this, the base chicken stock with herbs and spices to “hotten,” and definitely hot. The 12-ounce tin of sauce is 65 cents, and New Yorkers will fine it at Seven Park Avenue Foods, 107 East 34th Street, at Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue, Stumpp and Walter, 132 Church Street, and B. Altman, Fifth Avenue at 34th Street. Or order direct from the Bird and Bottle Inn, Albany Post Road, Garrison, New York.
Something else ready to mail from this famous inn kitchen is the oyster-and-herb poultry stuffing, fine of texture, can-packed. No tired flavor here; its taste the very soul of the oyster. A dressing of old New Orleans and flavored most delicately with celery, onions, green peppers, parsley, and garlic. Butter gives the suave richness, a dressing like an oyster forcemeat. Made in small quantities, just as it's made for the Bird and Bottle's own guests. There half broilers are stuffed with the dressing and oven-baked. You can't stuff this doen, too rich, too oystery. Price, 90 cents for the 10 ½-ounce tin, postage prepaid.
Romary's biscuits are baking, the Tunbridge Wells biscuits, we mean—five kinds now are coming from England, the first since the war. The hitch was no butter, and Romary biscuits baked without butter are as bride without bridegroom. First on the return list is the water biscuit, now called a creamed butter wafer, being made rich as Croesus, the perfect companion to cheese and sherry.
Afternoon tea biscuit is among the imports, very short, medium sweet, made by an old Kentish recipe. Parmestiks are cocktail biscuits nicely tanged of Pramesan. Everybody's love, the ginger nuts, rich, crisp, and crunchy to melt in the mouth, delicately flavored of the ginger from Canton. Only old Romary and the bees know the secret of Honey Back made with oats, plenty of pure honey, and butter, baked into crunchy golden rounds. Maison Glass, 15 East 47th Street, has the line.
There, too, another English returnee, the well-known St. Ivel's English Stilton, double cream, blue-veined, semihard. Eight years since the last Stilton shipment. A peerless cheese and robust for the cold months. As a background for claret or Bordeaux, it is greatly esteemed—but a cheese flattering to the most ordinary of wines.
Look into Plumbridge, the old-fashioned “old look” candy store in one of New york's most fashionable neighborhoods, 21 East 65th Street, just off Madison Avenue. Chinese antiques in the window, a few trays of candy, you'd scarcely look twice. Yet for sixty-six years Plumbridge has been making sweets for New York's carriage trade.
Plumbridge fame rests with the stuffed fruits, a sweet difficult to write about withour lapsing into superlatives. To tell the story of their origin, go back ninety-nine years to England and Grand-father Plumbridge, who owned a fleer of sailing ships, importing the first tropical fruits into Britain. It was sixty-six years ago his grandson Charles, with fruit on his mind, came to New York to establish the first Bon Voyage fruit-basket shop. But fresh fruits so highly perishable resulted in constant loss, and Charles decided they weren't worth the bother. He experimented with ways to turn dried fruits into whisper-soft delicacies. How well he succeeded is an old, old story. He let the fresh-fruit business dwindle in favor of working with the less perishable sweets.
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