Hit the jack pot of all things good—the Jack Pot Beans, a product of Hitching Post Foods, Inc., Savannah, Georgia. These beans are the big, mealy limas, cooked Southern style with brown sugar and cooked almost to the caramelized state; oh, wonderful flavor! Good to heat and eat as they are, or top with link sausage and into the oven to heat until the meat browns. Jack Pot beans keep their shape, are tender and sweet, yet not sticky. They're like no other beans!
This is but one of three new items come to join the Hitching Post Dressing, now a year old, the first product of the firm. Hitching Post Foods is a woman's business, that of Mrs. C. Wesley Frame, who was Rosalind Kress, daughter of the late Claude W. Kress, former president of the five-and-ten-cent store chain. It was two years ago that Mrs. Frame stopped at Hitching Post Inn at Aiken, South Carolina, and marveled at the goodness of the salad dressing. A woman of impulse, she decided to go into business and start with this dressing. She asked the restaurant owner to sell the exclusive recipe rights, and they agreed on a price. Last winter the dressing made its bow in the market. It's a sauce rich of oil, a combination of olive and vegetable, rosy with tomato, zesty with good vinegar, and fragrant of many herbs and spices, accented with garlic. The dressing has enough authority to win favor generally, yet enough subtlety to please those of knowing palate. Good for almost any type of salad, on cabbage, over greens, nice with fruit. Blend with snappy cheese to use as canape spread or stuff it into celery. Add to cottage or cream cheese when preparing a dunk for potato chips and carrot jackstraws. Excellent as a moistener when deviling the eggs. Shrimp takes on a new and lively flavor dipped into this sauce. Brush it over steaks, chops, fish, poultry—then broil for new flavor. Use it sparingly when you season freshly cooked spinach, broccoli, green beans. The 6-ounce bottle is 49 cents.
Slimmers delight in the special Creole vinegar, no oil in this dressing. Good on fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, greens. The spicy vinegar can serve as base for a quickly made French dressing by adding two parts oil. A simple combination of red-wine and cider vinegar with sugar to take off the sharp edge, herbs and spices adding power to the flavor. Pungent, delightful!
Mint syrup is a medium-thick sauce, quite sweet with a tart undertone. It's of moss-green color, made so by the addition of a tablespoon finely chopped fresh mint to each jar. Three ingredients only—vinegar, sugar, herb. Use it with lamb, pork, or veal, as a fine sweetener for tea, hot or cold. Drizzle it over fruit cups and fruit salads. Around 49 cents for the 6-ounce bottle.
B. Altman in New York has the complete line of Hitching Post foods. The salad dressing is available at R.H. Macy, also at Dussourd and Filser, 960 Madison Avenue, George Shaffer's Market, 673 Madison Avenue, and Joseph Victori, 164 Pearl Street. Ask in your own city. There is wide distribution through the Southern states, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Montana, Nevada, California.
Twin fruit confections are the Aplets and Cotlets, tasting like Turkish Delight, only a bit more delightful, made in Cashmere, Washington, in the shadow of the towering Cascade Mountains which divide the state north from south. Here lies the Wenatchee Valley with its world-famous apples, with its many soft fruits—cherries, pears, plums, apricots. It's the juice of the apple and juice and pulp of the apricot that the Liberty Orchards Company are using in their candy confections, this plus vast quantities of fine walnut meats. In the Aplets, pure apple juice is cooked with water and sugar. For Cotlets, canned apricots and the sun-dried fruits are used in a puree. The finished square jellied pieces, dusty of sugar, are like Turkish Delight but more vibrant in flavor.
These confections have been sent many times to the White House for the pleasure of our presidents, and some years ago when Prince Edward, future king of England, made a visit to Canada, the officials of the small town where he visited had a de luxe box of these sweets made for him, the box cover embossed with the royal coat of arms.
The candy is selling in New York City at Vendome Table Delicacies, 415 Madison Avenue, Seven Park Avenue Foods, 107 East 34th Street, ＄1.50 for 1 pound, 75 cents the ½ pound.
America's sweetest valentine comes styled by Blum's, seen first in October in the Blum's San Francisco offices, now in the stores. The novelty is a white box shaped like a big envelope, stamped with Blum's little Dutch boy and girl, the postmark reading “Loveland,” deted February fourteenth, and addressed “To my Valentine, heaven, U.S.A.” The box carries one pound of Blum's best chocolate assortment, centered with a red-foiled heart, price around ＄2.50, selling in the Blum shop in lord and Taylor, New York, at I. Magnin in San Francisco and in Beverly Hills.
The gaufrette of France is at home in America, made here for six years, but only this winter going on sale across the country. A medium-sweet little waffle, made thin as gossamer, perfumed of vanilla, crisp as a potato chip.
Baked like any waffle, the gaufrette comes hot from the grid to be cut into halves, each half folded into pie-wedge shape, thinly pointed it is, sharp enough to jab into ice cream, which is one way to serve it. A graceful sweet to pass with a macedoine of fresh fruit, pleasant with tea, a love with hot chocolate.
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.
These stuffed fruits are among the finer things of life. The figs used are the imported Smyrna macaroni figs; the dates the Halawy from Iraq; from California's Santa Clara Valley come the prunes and apricots, the largest size available. The prunes are stuffed with their own meat and so fat, so packed with solid eating they run but 8 to the pound. The apricots are steamed, madhed, and formed into little bundles of delight. The figs and the dates are nut-filled, the price ＄1.75 a pound.
A galaxy of inspired candies has come from the Plumbridge kitchen over the years. Some say that here you buy the best chocolate caramels in the wide world. We wouldn't go that far looking for argument. But they are indeed excellent, made with heavy cream and a quantity of butter. The spiced pecans, the salted pecans, cashews, and almonds are made by a secret process that keeps the coating hugging tight to the nuts. Spiced pecans and salted almonds are ＄2.75, to give you a tip-off on prices. The nuts are prepared daily and often three times a day to keep up with the orders.
Along a low wall shelf the freshly made chocolates are arranged in card-board sampling boxes. First the creams, maple, Italian, coffee, and the coconut royals. There are chocolate-covered filberts, and the chocolate-covered marzipan that nobody can improve upon, and we say so, fearing not a single word of back talk. Luxuriously, indulgently nibble your way down the row. Try the prune piece, sample the nougat, have a chocolate chip. The mints are strongly and truly mint-flavored.
Fifteen years ago Charles Plumbridge died and his wife continued the business, a great share of which she handled by mail. late last summer Mrs. Plumbridge, then seventy, decided she couldn't take another Christmas with its deluge of orders and sold her shop and candy secrets to Madelyn C. Hoey, who has pledged to carry on in the Plumbridge tradition. With the shop she inherited the candy-maker who has been making these good things for eighteen years.
Every box leaving the shop is packed to order, a custom-made box, the fruits foil-wrapped, the candies, the nuts each in separate drawers of the chestlike boxes. After the contents are gone, use the cabinet for jewelry. The boxes are priced at ＄6, ＄7, and ＄8. Bon voyage containers lavishly beribboned have 5 or 7 drawers and sell for ＄11.50 and ＄13.50, respectively.