Rain or shine, spring's in the bones. Undeniable evidence at Ye Olde Herb Shoppe, 46 Dey Street, New York. Here are spring tonics for sale, the old-fashioned kinds made of bark, seed, and berry to turn into teas to quicken the blood. Here are boneset and elder flowers, and bark of the sassafras, the red clover heads. But Waldmeister for us, the herb for May wine, 1 ounce 50 cents.
Springtime is teatime. Pass the Dundee shortbread, Keiller's shortbread, a Scottish specialty since 1797. Comes the first shipment in a decade, selling mail order from the FFF Fine Food Store, 35 West Eighth Street, New York. The bread is packed in 1 1/2-pound vacuum tins to guarantee freshness, price ＄1.59, or 3 tins ＄4.50.
Back in 1839 when New York was a young sprig of a city and there was no such thing as a telephone or a cocktail party, the ladies gave teas. From Washington Square around five o'clock came the gentle music of silver spoons against eggshell china; came the small cakes in pastel colors baked by fashionable Dean's on lower Broadway. The same little cakes are in the cases today, now the shop is located uptown at 6 East 57th Street. The petits fours are layers of sponge put together with soft, rich fillings, iced in delicate colors, the price ＄2 a pound, by count about 40 pieces. You pay the postage when ordering by mail. There is a charge of 35 cents for special delivery.
Everybody talks about Smithfield ham from “Ole Virginy.” Few know what it means. Originally this ham was made from the razorback hogs, born and reared in Smithfield and dry-cured in that village, then heavily smoked and allowed to hang for a year. Today a Smithfield ham means much the same thing; it's a ham protected by law from unethical commercial exploitation. Virginia's General Assembly, aroused by the threatened heresy, has passed stringent laws defining genuine Smithfield as the meat of a peanut-fed hog of razorback ancestry, raised in the immediate vicinity of Captain John Smith's namesake village, and cured, smoked, and aged in that place by a formula dating back to early Colonial days.
That original razorback was the blue-blood cavalier of pigdom, bold and free-roaming. Today his descendants are kept within bounds but allowed to grub for a living in woods and swamps during spring and summer. Comes a crisp autumn morning when the peanut vines are frosty in their shocks and the hogs are turned in to root for the unharvested surplus. Such outdoor exercise keeps trim the porcine waistline, and peanuts in the diet give that difference in taste, that softness in texture unlike the firm flesh of hogs corn-fattened. The hogs are traditionally killed idn the late fall, the meat processed under Federal inspection. After chilling, the meat is dry-cured with salt, sugar, black pepper, and other spices, then follows the slow smoking over smoldering embers of hickory and applewood. Summer's heat finishes the job of mellowing the flavor and leaves a lean shank, darkened and weazened but of heavenly aroma. Left to hang, it should gather flecks of mold, the color of old copper, an extra dividend as the mold imparts a distinctive flavor not otherwise to be had.
Want to experiment with a genuine Smithfield ham and not bother with the cooking? Colony Ham Company of Norfolk, Virginia, sell these 8- to 12-pound hams ready to serve, baked with sugar and spices, sauterne-basted, beautifully garnished, the price ＄1.95 a pound plus 50 cents per ham for mailing east of the Mississippi, ＄1 west.
Bellows' Gourmets' Bazaar has a luxury item from France we haven't seen around in eight years, the coquilles St. Jacques, a 6 1/2-ounce tin accompanied by 4 scallop shells, price ＄2.25 for the set. Many the ways to prepare the scallop—with mushrooms and tomatoes, with lobster sauce, with Mornay sacue—but this little tin carries scallops done Brittany style by Courlin Frères; beautifully seasoned with spices and herbs, blessed gently with wine. The scallops are tender, finely cut, made rich of butter. Divide the contents of the tin among the 4 shells, sprinkle with crumbs, butter-dot, and slip under the boiler. Serve as a first course to a very best dinner. Order by mail: Bellows' Gourmets' Bazaar, 67 East 52nd Street, New York, ＄2.25 for the set, plus postage.
A bacon delectable indeed is Forst's Catskill Mountain, and no accident that it is so full-flavored and fine. This comes from select corn-fed hogs, the bacon cured not for days but for long weeks, then smoked to a turn over hickory embers. Each strip is squared into a good, solid chunk, derinded, and all the little cartilages or “buttons” removed for more pleasurable eating. It's a bacon to strengthen one down to the marrow. Smell of bacon frying, visions of brown-hued biscuits and blackberry jelly, of strong coffee steaming hot. Smoked whole-slab bacon, 8 to 12 pounds, is ＄1.20 a pound, delivery charges prepaid from the smokehouse to anywhere in the United States and canada. Address The Forsts, Castkill Mountain Smokehouse, Kingston, New York.
Catch 'em young is the French way when canning a vegetable. The tiniest peas ever put into tins come to us out of France. And have you seen the infant corn? Doll-sized ears just over an inch long, the pearly little kernels barely beginning to form, packed in tarragon vinegar. This relish came before the war and is again in the stores. Epis de Mais, ＄1.15 for a 5-ounce jar at B. Altman, Fifth Avenue and 34th Street.
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