HomeMy WebLinkAboutZurich Herald, 1953-02-12, Page 6Hangover Cure Takes Herring -
Balm Sounds ViTorse Than The Bite
lt5y WADE JONES
NEA Staff Correspondent
Maoris --- Visitors seeking balm
elor too much over -celebration
vaight get a tip from a few of
the curious cures of Europe. On
Ilse other hand, they might just
lee worse.
Some of the remedies seem
worse than the ailment they're
n pposed to cure. In tact, they
neem to be based on the theory
that if the cure is awful enough,
laze patient will forget all about
;kis original indisposition.
Fish, for instance, In parts of
ermany, where a hangover is
stalled a katzenjammer, and in
veral other north European
4ountries, it's the custom before
retiring to gulp down a whole
:herring dipped in chopped onion.
The technique is simple. You
lust take the herring—prefer-
eibly raw—by the tail, lean your
head back and swallow it down,
ht's supposed to absorb the al-
rehol in the system and make
you awake up in the morning
:tiling like a million marks.
* ,, „
lie Germany, fish thus eaten
etre called rollmops, but have
amore the effect of vacuum clean -
ars.
Most Europeans subscribe to
the theory that an ounce of pre-
vention is worth a quart of cure.
So they eat a lot before and
while they're drinking,
In countries like Belgium,
;Holland, Norway, and Sweden
:eiany people eat a chunk of but-
ter beforehand if they haven't
had time to eat anything more.
In southern Europe they often
eat several slices of bread dunked
in olive oil.
.After a party in Holland it's
often customary for the host to
give you something called "uits•-
anyter," which literally means
stomething to get you out of the
place with, It usually consists of
'bread and butter and fried ham
nnd eggs.
In France, which boasts more
running feet of bar space per
person than any other country
.in the world, people also eat a
lot while they're drinking. And
that's despite the fact the coun-
tty has 580,000 bars and only
49,000 ,bakeries.
Parisians, young people par-
ticularly, like to go to Les Halles,
the great market place, after a
late party and eat onion soup.
When food fails, though, Euro-
peans are great believers in the
hair -of -the -dog theory,
The French have two words
sor hangover which are good
yardsticks in the matter, One ,is
'mai aux chevaux," which
:means aching hair, and the other
Heavy, Heavy, hangs the hang-
over of Frenchman Raoul Pres-
s 3e, here trying an international
e:ure, to wit: a raw herring to be
'followed by hair -of -the -dog (in
Mass) while he wears American-
made hangover hat compcirt-
nented for ice, aspirin and
other panaceas,
"gueule de boil," which is mouth
of wood. If you've got either of
these it probably means you're
grievously afflicted and can take
stern curative measures.
Louis, of the Crillon Hotel bar,
recommends what he calls a
Smiling Joe --one part lemon
juice and three parts vodka, with
ice.
The French. workingman will
probably step into the corner
bistro and call fora rince co-
ehon, which is white wine and
seltzer, and which picturesquely
means to wash the pig out of the
system,
Jacques, head barman at the
swank Relais-Plaza, unhesitat-
ingly recommends a mixture of
ice cold beer and tomato juice.
"But not if you've been drink-
ing scotch the night before," he
adds. Jacques is firm on the
point that the only morning -
after cure for too much scotch
the night before is a drop more
of the same.
But Jean, bar chief at the Tan -
gage Restaurant, doesn't entirely
approve of the hair -of -the -dog
bv.siness.
"It doesn't cure the hangover,"
he says. "It only postpones it.
We once had a client who came
in here, a genteel type. He drank
every morning to postpone a
hangover he had acquired 20
years before. One day he forgot
to drink and the hangover
caught up with him—a 20 -year-
old hangover, my friend—and he
just sort of exploded like this—
pfft. They could not even find
the little pieces of him,"
Some Strange Bets
People Have Made
It probably started when Eve
provokingly bet weak-willed Ad-
am that he daren't eat an apple
off the forbidden tree. He
couldn't resist the challenge, and
since that memorable. day the
betting habit seems to have
caught on.
Sometimes a small amount of
money changes hands, sometimes
fortunes. And on record are the
wagers of those happy-go-lucky
betters who have had not only
to eat their words, but also their
stakes.
William Hendricks rashly said
of a certain, baseball team: "if
it wins that next match I'll eat
my hat." The team won. Wil-
liam, being a man of integrity,
promptly made arrangements to
fulfil his promise.
Inviting witnesses home he
took his favorite straw hat, drop-
ped it into a saucepan with thin
macaroni, added onions and to-
mato sauce, and boiled the lot
for fifteen minutes. He ate all
except the hatband. To an
anxious audience he exclaimed:
"Boy, I feel simply finer"
Far more painstaking and sci-
entific was the learned professor
who had to eat his shirt when he
lost a bet. He disolved the shirt
in acid veith another chemical..
The poisonous part of the concoc-
tion was filtered with a specially
built apparatus. The diner spread
the result on a piece of bread
and ate it.
Some time ago for a bet, a
Dutchman, Takkenberg, travel-
led from Amsterdam to Mar-
seilles, roughly some 840 miles,
by somersaults. The man won
his bet and statisticians estimated
that 2,000,000 sornesaults were
required for the whole distance.
Bottle carrying used to be a
popular sport in Deptford. This
branch of athletics entailed bal-
ancing a bottle, or stone jar, neck
downwards on the head.
Champion in this form of en-
tertainment was James Fowler
who once raced George Golding
to Brighton and back for a £50
wager. James won easily by the
decisive margin of twenty-five
miles.
The coming Presidential elec-
11I.ISS NortmA, nom, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. W. H. 11obbs, an(
MR. DONALD GORDON, C.M.G., LJ..,D., whose engagement has beer
Announced. Miss Ifobbs is a
graduate in Arts of MexiJl University anc
Nerved
during
taltlydrDmt
and Predenoff te CnadianNaionRaiws, andformeppy
Governor of the Bank of Canada and during the wnr Chairmen of the War-
time Prices and Trade Board. The marriage will take place in the spring
(Migv floLL�' DI+Mo Lv M'vcr,.forth,,,
Capita[ Calligrapher --If you received an invitation to the Inaugural
Bail, chances are it was written by this smiling Washington letter -
artist, Fay King. She wrote nearly 10,000 invitations in highly
ornamental script. For Harry Truman's inauguration, Miss King
turned out 30,000 in 39 days. Using a special type of pen, she
keeps spares, seen at left, always available.
tion in America will, for a cer-
tainty, add more unorthodox bets
to the list; perhaps one that will
cap that of the Detroit woman In
e past election.
This woman lost her bet and
had to walk across one of the
bridges clad. in long woollen un-
derwear. Then there was the
girl from Boston. Her part of the
bargain was to walk through the
streets of her home town wear-
ing shoes and a barrel.
Oddly enough the Modern
business man's short -tailed coat
came into popularity as the result
of a wager. Years ago, the then
Lord Spencer wagered that he
would cut off his long coat-tails
and walk about the city, thus
setting a new fashion. He won
his bet as can be seen. •
Every once in a while, espe-
cially during the silly season,
one reads of a conscientious loser
pushing a peanut for miles with
his nose, wheeling a companion
from one point to another in a
wheelbarrow, nudging a small
pebble from here to there with
a matchstick; but when a gain -
bier plays for real bag money and
refuses to admit defeat special
mention must be made of Col-
onel Edgeworth, who served un-
der William III.
One evening, having lost all
his money at a card table, he
took himself to an adjoining
school where his vrife sat play-
ing. A whispered word in her
ear resulted in husband and wife
locking themselves in another
room.
The Colonel emerged a short
time later carrying all his wife's
clothes, including her diamond -
buckled shoes. Re-entering the
game, using his wife's clothing
as stake money, he .ran into a
spell of good luck and managed
to win back all his losings and
return the good lady's wardrobe
to her.
Electronic Glow -Worm Shines Again,
Recharged in Pressure Cooker Lane
By Richard Kleiner
NEA Staff Correspondent
New York—A souped -up Lame.
pyris Noctiluca (glow-worm) is
causing quite a stir along what's
left of Tin Pan Alley. This en-
tomological ditty is "The Glow -
Worm," the hit song of the
1910s that's now back with a set
of electronic Iyrics and a new
lease on life.
It's a smash. But it typifies the
current bleakness of the musical
picture, when lyricists are hav-
ing to dip back 40 years or so
to find singable melodies.
"The Glow -Worm" has been.
selling well for more than four
decades. It's long been classed
as a "standard"—the publishers,
Edward B. Marks Music Corp.,
sell some 60 different arrange-
ments of it, for everything from
a saxophone quartette to a flute -
piano duet. '
But few modern songs stand a
chance of lasting so long. "The
Glow -Worm," and other melodies
of that era, were simple.
"Songs used to be written,"
says Herbert Marks, head of the
Marks song publishing firm, "for
people to sing around a piano.
Today, they're written for trick
effects on records. It's hard to sing
something like `Jamhalaya,' for
instance, even if you could re-
member the words."
Marks points out that there are
plenty of song -writers around.
His crowded waiting room is evi-
dence to that, But they write
melodies that sound goo.: coming
out of an echo chamber, or being
howled by a weeping tenor, or
strummed by what sounds like
17 guitars.
Songs, today, are written for
mechanical reproduction. And .
they're written under pressure.
It's gotten so one commentator
things they ought to rename Tin
Pan Alley "Pressure Cooker
Lane."
'.Co -day's song -writer has to
work fast. He makes far less
money now than he did in the
good . old gather- around -the -
piano days. His chief source of
revenue --sheet music—is selling
just moderately well. And the
writer and publisher get, at the
most, only two cents from each
record. Figuring a mullion rec-
ords, which is good, that means
the publisher and writer (or
writers) cut up a $20,000 melon,
And a million record song isn't
too common.
So the song -writers grind them
out as fast as they can, and when
they become hits, it's generally
because of a recording artist and
a recording arrangement, rather
than because of the quality of the
song itself.
"The Glow -Worm" is the ex-
ception. Marks poo-poos those
who talk about it as a "lucky
hit."
"After all," he says, "it's the
work of top artists. Paul Lincke,
who wrote the music, was the
foremost composer of Berlin in
his day. And Johnny Mercer,
who wrote the new lyrics—well,
I don't have to tell you about
Johnny Mercer. It wasn't luck—
it was skill and talent and hard
work."
eincke wrote it in 1902, and
called it "Gluhwurnlchen," which
even the Mills Brothers couldn't
have done much with. It came
over to this country in 1905, got
a new name and new lyrics and
eventually found its way into a
Lew Fields show, "The Girl Be-
hind the Counter." ,
From then on, it's been a semi -
classic. Children learned to play
the piano from it. Little girls
danced to it in school plays. Big
girls took their clothes off to it
in burlesque houses. Little shav-
ers
haveers sang it, and so dad. big shav-
ers in barber shop quartettes.
Then Johnny Mercer gave it
a lyrical transfusion, and the
Mills Brothers record of it be-
came one of the top sellers of
1952. Marks, hopes in the new
version, it'll keep glowing for
another 40 years.
Or at least as long, as the new
lyrics put it, as the little bug,
with the neon tail light contin-
ues to turn on the AC and the
DC.
Just Like Ottawa
"Here", says a Washington
paper, "are comparisons of the
wordage in some rather famous
pieces of writing:—
The Ten Com-
mandments 207 words.
The Lord's Prayer 56 words.
The Declaration of
Independence .... 300 words.
T h e Gettysburg
Address 266 words.
OPS Ceiling Order
for Cabbages 26,011 words. '
Too many of tts, in these days
of gas and electric stoves, sacri-
fice a whole lot of good eating
by trying to do ou" cooking much
too speedily.
For instance, a browned, ten-
der pot roast seasoned just right
and served with plenty of brown
gravy is popular in almost every
family. But, be sure to take time
to cook pot roasts, Swiss steaks,
short ribs and other less tender
cuts of beef slowly to assure
tenderness and to retain the
juices,
Whatever cut of pot roast you
buy, roll it in seasoned flour and
brown it on all sides in a small
amount of fat in a deep, heavy
skillet as your first step in roast-
ing it. When it is well browned,
slip a low rack under the meat
and add is to 1 cap of water
before covering it for a long,
slow cooking, if you like a spe-
cial seasoning, add a few slices
of onion, a bay leaf and 2 or 3
whole cloves. Then, covered, put
it in a 350°F. oven to cook for
2 or 3 hours. For the last 30 or
40 minutes of this cooking, add
whatever vegetables you want to
serve with your roast—carrots,
onions, potatoes, turnips, etc.
There are several cuts of beef
that are especially desirable for
pot roasts. The round bone
shoulder roast which has only
one small round bone is good.
The blade bone shoulder roast
usually called chuck is .cod, also,
but is difficult to carve across the
grain. The boned rump is one of
the best pieces for pot -roasting,
and a boneless sirloin tip is ten-
der and easy to serve, though it
often lacks the fat that adds so
much to the taste of these slow -
cooking pieces of beef.
In the slow -cooking steak field,
round is the most popular cut in
almost all parts of the country,
It is from the round that Swiss
steaks are procured, for a Swiss
steak is a round that has been
cut from 1 to 2 inches thick and
then pounded or "trenched" with
seasoning and flour. Brown a
Swiss steak well and cook it
slowly in tomato juice, beef broth
or any other savory liquid until
you can cut it with a fork—and
you'll gain a reputation as a spe-
cialized meat cooker!
a.
If you want r special touch to
your Swiss steak, add to the beef
broth liquid onions, mushrooms,
tomato sauce or a combination of
these, And be sure to cook it a
long time slowly and serve some
of the sauce you've cooked it
in with each portion.
POT ROAST WITH
VEGETABLES
3. pounds beef pot roast
Flour
eup fat
2 teaspoons salt
14 teaspoon pepper
1 cup water
6 potatoes, cut in half
6 nzediunz carrots, pared
6 medium onions, peeled
6 small turnips, pared
14 cup flour
Coat beef on all sides in flour.
Brown in the fat in Dutch oven
or heavy skillet. Add salt, pepper
and water. Slip low rack under
!neat. Cover and cook at 350° F.
2 hours. Add vegetables and cook
about ?z hour longer of until
meat and vegetables are fork
tender. Arrange meat and veget,
ables on hot platter, Add water
to kettle to make 2 cups broth.
Mix the ae cup flour with 3 cup
cold water. Stir and add slowly
to broth, Boil 5 minutes. Season
more if necessary.
If you'd like an entirely new
taste to your next pot roast, try
filing it this way:
* .' *
SWEET SOTJR POT II OAST
3-5 Pound pot roast
2 tablespoons fat
x% cup sliced onion
1 cup vinegar
u cup brown sugar, firmaiy
packed
zel, teaspoon nutmeg
S miediunr. turnips
2 cups cooked peas
Butter or margarine
Brown roast in hot fat in heavy
skillet. Add onions and cook until
onions are transparent. Add vine-
gar, sugar and nutmeg. Cover
tightly and simmer 3-31 hours
or until fork tender. Thicken
liquid for gravy. Serve with but-
tered peas and turnips.
Short ribs may be browned,
seasoned and covered, with
small amount of water added,
and baked at 300° F. for 1 - 2
hours, or they .may be ixed with
spices for a special meal,
* �, *
SPICY BEEF SHORT RIBS
2 lbs. beef short ribs
3 tbisp. lard or drippings
1 nmedium onion, sliced
2 tblsp, butter. or !margarine
2 tblsp. vinegar
14 cup ketchup
1 tblsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 tblsp. brown sugar
1 tsp. prepared mustard
?2 cup water
14 cup chopped celery
1 teaspoon salt
teaspoon pepper '
Brown short ribs in lard; brown
onion in butter or margarine.
Combine onion with all ingredi-
ents except meat and simmer
until thickened (about 30 min-
utes). Pour off drippings from
ribs and pour over the ribs the
simmered sauce. Cover and sim-
mer or bake at 350° F. about
2 hours or until tender, Makes
4 - 6 servings.
If you would like to serve a
flank steak for your next buffet
supper, try it with this special
blue cheese topping. Buy a top
quality flank steak and remove
membrane from both sides. Trim
off excess fat and uneven edges.
Place trimmed and scored steak
in a shallaw pan and pour over it
this mixture: 1 cup salad oil, 2
tablespoons vinegar and I mashed
clove of garlic, Cover and keep
in refrigerator 8 to 24 hours,
turning steak several times so it
will absorb dressing. At broiling
time, remove steak and rub each
side with cut clove of garlic.
Broil one side in preheated
broiler about 3 inches from heat
for about 5 minutes, Turn and
spread other side with mashed
blue cheese (you'll need about
4 ounces). Continue broiling
until cheese is bubbly hot and
lightly browned. Carve very thin
slanting slices. -
Ferried Over, He'll Walk Brick --bobbin, junk cart -horse and cart
driver Abe Schaeffer pay their ferry fare for the last time and get
ready for the final ride across the river on the Fast Boston "Penny'6
Ferry. Discontinued after 120 years, the "Penny" Ferry, running
in the red, went to sect for the last time, It made its first trip in
1832,