Lindt Swiss Chocolate returns to America, the first shipment here since before the war. Back in a variety of kinds: semisweet milk, extra bitter, chocolate with marrons, with hazelnuts, with mocha. This is known the world over as the Rolls-Royce of chocolates, made by Lindt and Sprungli in a modernized factory situated on the Lake of Zürich near Kitchberg.
By common consent, Lindt of Berne's Gold Label was recognized in the old years as the supreme achievement in vanilla-flavored eating chocolate. The amalgamation of this firm with Sprungli of Zürich, whose products as a whole were considered by many just a shade finer, brought Europe's two greatest chocolate houses together, and quality reigns!
The secret of the firm's success is in blending many different kinds of cocoa bean to give great variety of flavors, literally a piece for every taste. The goodness of the milk chocolate is credited to the milk and cream used in its making, produced by the herds that graze the Alps in the Bernese Oberland and in the area of Gruyère. It has always been declared by Swiss cheese-makers that part of the indefinable goodness of their cheese can be credited to the grass in these high mountain pastures which provides a milk extra rich—that same indefinable goodness makes a chocolate outstanding.
The packaging of the chocolate is really magnificent. Each piece is individually foiled, four colors used. A narrow white band seals the foil, labeled “Chocolot Lindt” so there can be no mistake. Here is the genuine thing, typical of the great care given to detail.
In New York City, distribution has been made to virtually every fine shop. Hammacher Schlemmer, 145 East 57th Street; Louis Sherry, Fifth Avenue and 59th Street; Maison Glass, 15 East 47th Street; Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue; Joseph Victori, 164 Pearl Street; and many more. Also available in delicacy shops in Boston, Hartford, Washington, D. C., Atlanta, Chicago, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
Spread butter on the waffle with a lavish hand. Pour on golden syrup of the maple, a jewel-like ambrosia, pale as wheat straw, refined to diamond purity, delicate as a sunbeam. Maple syrup on waffles literally to melt in the mouth. Maple syrup's not cheap. It never will be. So when you buy, be sure it's as good as you can get for your money. One gallon of the 1950 spring crop ＄5.75; ½ gallon ＄3.25; ¼ gallon ＄1.75 F.O.B. Address Sugar Bush, Olean House, Olean, New York. Your money back is the promise if this Isn't as fine a syrup as you've ever tasted.
The Vermont Country Store is doing a smart thing in offering their water-ground gristmill products in a sampler kit. You can choose four of twelve kinds, send ＄1.50, and get a full pound bag of each (4 pounds), postpaid cast of the Mississippi; west, add 50 cents. These whole grains are just that, the grain kernel ground slowly on a cold stone mill to keep the vital germ. That germ, as you know, contains over 90 per cent of the nourishment of the original grain.
Here are the items for your choosing. A sample cereal made of corn and cracked wheat. Cook and cook, the stuff doesn't go gooey; you can actually chew it. Consider the cracked wheat cereal, the whole grain of wheat cracked on Stone, The crushed wheat cereal is for those who want a finer, softer product, and is, by the way, excellent for children. One cereal made exclusively for tots over two is a whole grain of corn and wheat, finely ground. Scotch oatmeal is available in limited quantity and contains the germ of the oats. Wheat meal, sometimes called graham flour, contains the real germ content and makes beautiful bread, by itself or in combination with other whole grains. And of course there's corn meal, the yellow, which contains more nourishment than the white. You know what to do with it—three hundred things! Other items are rye meal, buck-wheat flour, Scotch oatmeal flour, muffin meal, kernel wheat. Is that twelve?
Send your check to The Original Vermont Country Store, Vrest Orton, Proprietor, Weston, Vermont.
Kippered herring is one of the newer members of the ever-growing family of Gorton's Sea Foods, and one every kipper-lover should make it a point to sample. Firm, fat herring are kippered Scotch style, that is, the fish are split and flattened out, lightly salted and oak-smoked to a delicate brown, dried, but not dried out, almost like fresh herring. The filets cook during the smoking so the tender slabs may be used cold from the tin.
The herring is a fish of endless resource and sovereign merit and when suddenly transformed by smoke into the glorious kipper, it's the cook's greatest blessing. She can use herring cold in divers ways. One favorite with the English is to pass kippers with hot boiled potatoes, rye bread and butter, with the clean sharpness of gherkins, and, of course, the bottle of ale or beer. The kippers served hot—baked, broiled, boiled, or poached—blend admirably with eggs. We are especially partial to the herring for a Sunday-in-the-country breakfast, along with a creamy mound of scrambled “hen fruit.”
The 12-ounce oval tin of Gorton's Kippers yields six to seven fat filets sufficient for three servings. The smoked flavor, though delicate, must be taken in modest amounts for the greatest pleasure—two filets a portion is enough. Baked kippered herring is one of our favorites, a supper dish guaranteed to give that contented look.
Ask in your local grocery for Gorton's Kippered Herring in the 12-ounce oval tin. Send the label, or any Gorton product label, and ask for “105 Deep Sea Recipes” from Gorton Pew Fisheries. Gloucester, Massachusetts.
The fresh lychee of the Orient is selling by mail, for the first time available to the American public, a rare and luscious surprise. This fruit so highly esteemed by the Chinese is too fragile for import and heretofore hits come only in the dried state, the so-called lychee nut of the thin, brittle brown shell, the center like a soft prune, with a hard black stone.
The fresh lychee is quite a different treat, one of the most delicious morsels one can conceive when in a perfectly ripe state. Its color, size, and form are like a large red strawberry's, the thin, tough outer skin can be slipped off between thumb and finger just before eating. A fruit high in sugar, cool-tasting, with a delightful, slightly acid tang. In a word, unique.
The fresh lychee must be cared for like any semiperishable fruit. It is picked tree-ripened and shipped parcel post special delivery to arrive still wearing its strawberry blush, which is held several days before the skin starts to brown. The fruit will keep nicely in the refrigerator for two to three weeks. It grows in clusters on the limb tips of evergreen trees that may reach the height of forty feet, trees indigenous to southeastern China where the climate is very much like that of central and southern Florida. It is only recently that lychee orchards are being started in this country, and the harvest so far is limited. Previously, the small quantity of fruit available has gone to the Chinese in northern cities. Now for the first time, the fruit is offered to the general public in June only. The price postpaid is ＄2.95 for the 1-pound box. Address Eddie Ash's Homestead Groves, Dept. G, Box 868, Goulds, Florida.
Here on my desk is a pale green bag of coarsely woven material with an over-all sea-life design—lobsters, crabs, oysters, fish. Untie the heavy white cord, see whit's inside. Neatly packed are a dozen small tins of fancy sea foods; three tins of Chinook red salmon, two tins of kippered sturgeon, two tins of smoked oyster spread, two tins of smoked whole Oysters, three tins of Albacore tuna. Every last item is a quality product styled for a gourmet's pleasure.
The sampling bag costs ＄5.50, or you can order the items separately by the dozen, these, too, coming in the sea-bag package. One dozen 3 ½-ounce tins of the whole oysters, ＄7.50. Succulent, render, medium-sized oysters from the Pacific, smoked with applewood, a most subtle, elusive flavor. The oysters in the spread are smoked in the same manner, a dozen 3 ½-ounce tins ＄6. One dozen 3 ¼-ounce tins of kippered sturgeon ＄6.50; fancy Chinook salmon ＄4.50; Albacore tuna, white and delicate meat, ＄4. Address orders to North Star, Inc., 1001 Westlake Avenue North, Seattle, Washington.
A little pot of strawberry preserves, made by a recipe of long ago, comes from Frances Hall Perrins of Westford, Massachusetts. Done as grandma did them, pound for pound of strawberries and sugar, the berries, which keep shapely right through the cooking, are jarred in their own rich syrup. Very fine going with the hot biscuits.
The blue-gray jam pot is hand-fashioned of the same New England stone-ware used in the old years and decorated in the same manner with a hand-painted blue-glaze strawberry cluster under a white dip. The price for the 10-ouoce jar with the stoneware pot is ＄3.25 east of the Mississippi, ＄3.50 west. Four 10-ounce jars without the pot, east of the Mississippi ＄4.50, ＄4.75 west.
Down in the heart of the New Jersey blueberry country, three miles out of Pemberton, lives Elizabeth Daumont, maker of the best blueberry preserves we ever loaded on a biscuit. The Daumoms have twelve acres of cultivated blues which they sell in see-through window boxes, shipping in season by air to Chicago and Detroit. Berries that are boxed to go flying must be dry when they're picked. Its the early-morning, dew-wet fruit that goes into Elizabeth's preserve pots, into her freezer. Berries are frozen by the gallon, and the jam is made almost to order.
A wonderful preserve, the berries plump and tender, a spread with real fragrance and the fresh berry taste. Blue Acres Farm has all the latest wrinkles for growing blueberries superior. There are overhead irrigation, air spraying, bees imported at blossomtime for pollination. In New York, the preserve sells at Dupin's, 312 East 72nd Street, and at Frozen Food Fate, 35 West 8th Street, the price 60 cents for a 10-ounce jar, or 3 jars ＄1.75, plus 25 cents mailing charge for 1 jar or 3.
Next time you venture forth in search of something new, something different, to serve as an hors d'oeuvre with cock-tails, ask in your delicacy shop for the smoked mussels here out of Holland, packed in olive oil, packed by Mieras Adriaanse, Ltd., of Yerseke, one of Holland's oldest sea-food fisheries. These mussels are smaller than American mussels and, what's more, are cultivated in much the same way as Long Island oysters.
The importer tells us that mussels are found abundantly along the shores of western Europe, but are so irregular in size that they present a packing problem. By farm-raising, the mussels can be grown to the exact size desired. Every year the mussel firmers visit the rich, natural beds along the Dutch shores and dredge for the young to use for their seed. These are taken to the Province of Zeeland and scattered over mussel banks in deep waters leased from the government. Once again, before harvest, the mussels are dredged and scattered on new locations for a final fattening. It takes from one to two years for the mussel to reach the desired processing size.
Dutch mussel beds are inspected by government bacteriologists at regular periods, and this shellfish goes to market as our oysters do with certificates of purity. Tender-sweet the new product, considered in its homeland a great delicacy. Ask for An Gourmet or the Cresca Brand. Sold in New York by Hammacher Schlemmer, 145 East 57th Street; Ellen Grey, 800 Madison Avenue; Seven Park Avenue Foods, 109 East 34th Street; Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue; C. Henderson, 52 East 55th Street; B. Altman, Fifth Avenue at 34th Street In Brooklyn at Abraham and Straus; and on Long Island in Locust Valey by Perano Figari Also to be found in delicacy shops in the East in Boston, Hartford, New Haven, Princeton. Trenton, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. In the South in Jacksonville, Miami, and Dallas; and in Chicago, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The 3 ½-ounce tins retail for around 45 cents.
A tall and genial Englishman is the Honorable Gordon W. N. Palmer of Heading and London, England, one of the eight Palmers who own and operate the renowned biscuit company which before the war kept five thousand workers busy turning out five hundred kinds of biscuits shipped to every country on earth. Lord Palmer is president of the firm, Gordon Palmer, one of his sons. The trip to the States was made to renew old friendships and to see how Americans like their biscuits these days.
Tea with Mr. Palmer to sample the various sweets in the Huntley and Palmer line. Some forty kinds are in production again, those for export made to prewar standard, the needful materials granted by the British Ministry of Foods. Petit Beurre was the one we liked especially well, a semisweet wafer made with butter, baked quite brown and very crisp. Homey-tasting, a biscuit every English-man has known since cradle days, a biscuit to enjoy with tea as it tends to leave the tea's flavor intact.
Ginger nuts are another old-timer returned, these baked as hard as a nut, so the name. English lads carry these by the pocket load, just to have handy when hunger strikes. Oldsters like the ginger nut with the late evening tea, a nightcap insuring sound slumber, they say. A great cookie for tea dunking, it doesn't fall apart in the brew. Ginger nuts are made with Barbados raw sugar, made on machines invented three generations ago. “We don't dare modernize the ginger nuts,” said Mr. Palmer. “It might cause a revolution.”
The sweeter biscuits of the line sell best in America. One sweet assortment is made up of eight kinds including the Petit Beurre, shortcakes, the Osborne, butter wheats, sun cakes, a very short biscuit, and a similar one called Nice with a coconut sprinkling. A still sweeter box load is the Carnival. In this collection ore the cream-filled biscuits, the sandwiches, and again the shortcake.
A useful biscuit the golden puff, a round cracker about 2 ½ inches in diameter, flaky and rich, half cracker, half pastry, meant to be heated and split and used as a base for creamed dishes. In Mr. Palmer's home the family like them filled with cheese and jam to cat as a sandwich.
Just before the war, the firm's best seller in the United States was the cocktail assortment. Here it comes again. Remember those very tiny pieces, each just a bite big? The cheese crackers are the size of postage stamps. There are cheese and tomato oblong sticks and cheese puffs shaped like card symbols.
The Huntley and Palmer biscuits are in fine food shops in all of the larger cities. In New York at Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue; B. Altman; Maison Glass, 15 East 47th Street; and R. H. Macy.
“Find happiness from heaven” in your teacup. The Shanghai Syndicate, Inc., of San Francisco offers a line of Happiness China Teas, a perfect name for such distinguished vintages. “The leaves come up to a standard set in the late eighth century. They should curl like the dew-lap of a bullock, crease like the boot of a Tartar horseman, unfold like mist rising out of a ravine, and soften gently like fine earth swept by rain.” So insists the label.
Each kind in the line is hand-selected from the finest growing areas and imported direct. The teas are packed in tall 8-ounce tins, covered with a gold and green paper of Chinese motif, lined with plain white paper laminated to foil.
There are several types packed: oolong, 8 ounces, ＄1.35; Keemun, 10 ounces, ＄1.60; gunpowder, 12 ounces, ＄1.85; Lapsang souchong of the smoky tang, 8 ounces, ＄1.95; a rose flower tea, 10 ounces, ＄2.20; jasmine, 8 ounces, ＄2.35; Tien Foo, a blend, 8 ounces, ＄2.50; green de luxe, 8 ounces, ＄4.50. Address orders to the Shanghai Syndicate, Inc., Sansome and Jackson Streets, San Francisco 11, California.
Green grows the cress—a new type, Vita-Cress is the name—to raise in a dining-room pond contrived from a shallow dish. Soak a dish cloth in water and spread on the bottom of a dish or tray, sprinkle generously with the seeds, and keep moist but not drowned. The crop is ready for cutting in ten to twelve days. The cress grows two to three inches high, has a tangy flavor, almost bitter but delightful when served as an appetizer. Place the tiny leaves over thin slices of salty rye bread thickly spread with sweet butter.
The cress is unusual, too, as a garnish for fish. Toss a handful of the wee spears into a green salad. One dollar brings 3 packages, about 3 plantings. Order from Vita-Cress Company, 27 East Main Street, Mesa, Arizona.
Never ever such shrimp! Our hat's off to Harvey's smoked cocktail shrimp—so jumbo they resemble baby lobsters minus the claws; so spicy and delectable you are apt to eat yourself sick. The shrimp come cooked and smoked in the shell to a golden-brown hue. Let the guests peel their own—or do as we did, take off the shell but leave on the tail, a handy pick-up. The smokies can be eaten as they are or arranged around a dunking bowl for a saucy baptism. We prefer them unsauced as they are highly spiced, the tender flesh fragrant from the smoke treatment. No added zest seems needed.
Shipped prepaid anywhere in the United States, minimum order 2 pounds, selling at ＄2.50 a pound. They travel in pliofilm bags well-nested on shredded paper—and there's a whiff of clean smoke when the box opens. Address Harvey's, Inc., Bowie, Maryland. Satisfaction guaranteed by the firm, and no wonder! How any one could be disappointed with these jumbos is beyond our knowing.