Everything Old is New Again

July 30, 2014

I've been working – finally – on my memoir of the Gourmet days, and the other day I found myself trolling through the magazine's very first issue.  

Mostly it's a testament to how much things have changed.  But then I came upon this…..

"Food Flashes" by Clementine Paddleford

“Come the last, mad midnight of 1940, when the bells are belling and the crowds are yelling, let smoke snacks bombard the senses.  America has gone smoke crazy.  Deep within us all persists a natural craving for the taste of wood smoke. That yearning is a heritage harkening back millions of generations, perhaps, to some dim memory from the paleolithic age when the first true men ate meat roasted over a forest fire. Now the craving is easily satisfied. That leathery smokehouse smell is getting its dark perfume into every kind of food. 

For the holiday party may we suggest a smoked suckling pig.  Serve his brown majesty kneeling on a parsley bed.  His quizzical eyebrows are of lemon peel, his eyes are slices of stuffed olive, the apple in his mouth, a rosy lady apple.  Ornamental is the word for this hickory-smoked sweet morsel, the average weight seven pounds for around $5 at R.H. Macy’s. 

Then smoked turkeys, smoked oysters, smoked Wisconsin cheese, smoked salt.. 

I like the idea of the smokehouse smell being "leathery."  And I very much like the price: all you can hold for five bucks. 

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