Proper Attire
Inform your guests on the invitation to wear or bring their own painting smocks because they will be creating their own edible artwork at the party. Suggest that they “brush up” on their knowledge of modern artists and hold a game of guess-the-artist by showing pictures of paintings with the artists' signatures covered. Award various art supplies, such as paints and brushes, for prizes.
Titanic Tragedy
In 1912 when Peggy was thirteen years old, her father, Benjamin Guggenheim, brother of Solomon Guggenheim of art museum fame, went down with the Titanic in full evening attire. After his death, heiress Peggy was thought of as the “poor relation” in the family.
The Queen of Palm Beach's Luncheon
Marjorie Merriweather Post
Marjorie Merriweather Post was the only daughter of breakfast food innovator C.W. Post. Her father's inventions include Postum, a coffee substitute, Grape-Nuts cereal, and Post Toasties breakfast flakes. Born in 1887 in Springfield, Illinois, Marjorie was involved at an early age in her father's entrepreneurial projects. As a child she glued Postum labels onto the product's packages and when her father moved the family to Battle Creek, Michigan, she accompanied him on sales trips to win shelf space in a Grand Rapids grocery store next to his fellow inventor and competitor Kellogg. After Postum's success came a ready-to-eat breakfast food that was touted as “Marjorie's Baby Food”—Grape-Nuts. Marjorie later made her own mark on the company her father started by purchasing Clarence Birdseye's “frosted foods” company, General Foods. She was sympathetic to the average housewife's drudgery in the kitchen even though she didn't cook herself, and she was determined to make a difference by providing them with convenient alternatives for preparing the family meals.
The heiress to the cereal fortune became the toast of Palm Beach society along with her second husband, E.F. Hutton, in the 1920s, a time when the stuffy Old Society was breaking down to make way for the Jazz Age's cult of youth. The virtues of hospitality and sociability from Marjorie's middle-class Midwestern childhood and her participation in her family's acts of charity to the ill and needy combined with her fortune to pave the way for the elaborate benefit balls she staged in Palm Beach. Marjorie, now the “Queen of Palm Beach,” threw theme parties and costume parties with friends such as the flamboyant showman Flo Ziegfeld and his actress wife Billie Burke. In a tribute to those sophisticated soirees, here is a dinner menu suitable for entertaining your friends Palm Beach style.
A Cereal Queen's Party
This luncheon menu starts with a Cold Cucumber Soup that was once on the menu of one of Marjorie's friend Billie Burke's dinner parties. The dainty Palm Beach Finger Sandwiches are so called because a sandwich filled with pimento cheese is sometimes called a “Palm Beach.” (The vintage Highland Park Pharmacy lunch counter in Dallas has it on their menu.) Macadamia Nut Crusted Trout is an elegant entrée and it happens to have one of Marjorie's pet projects in the ingredients: macadamia nuts. Ms. Post financed a cousin's idea to plant macadamia seedlings in Hawaii and made arrangements with General Electric to create a macadamia nutshell cracking machine. Before this, there was no macadamia nut industry.
For dessert, a nod to the breakfast cereal that made Marjorie Merriweather Post's ascendancy to the throne as the Queen of Palm Beach possible, Grape-Nuts Ice Cream.
Cold Cucumber Soup
SERVES 6
INGREDIENTS:
3 cucumbers
½ cup chicken broth
1 cup cream
salt and peper to taste
2 slices smoked salmon
¼ cup sour cream
6 fresh dill sprigs
METHOD:
1 Peel, seed, and chop the cucumbers.
2 In a blender, purée the cucumbers with the chicken broth until smooth. Add the cream and blend again until smooth. Season with salt and pepper. Chill until ready to serve.
3 Slice the smoked salmon into strips.
4 Divide the cucumber soup evenly among 6 chilled soup bowls.
5 Garnish each soup bowl with the smoked salmon strips, a dollop of sour cream, and a dill sprig.
Palm Beach Finger Sandwiches
SERVES 6
INGREDIENTS:
4 ounces sharp yellow cheddar cheese
4 ounces white cheddar cheese
¼ cup diced pimentos
1 tablespoon cream
¼ cup mayonnaise and
salt and pepper to taste
12 slices good white bread (thin slices)
METHOD:
1 Shred the yellow and white cheddar cheeses and put in a bowl.
2 Add the pimentos, cream, and mayonnaise to the cheese and mix well.
3 Season the pimento cheese mixture with salt and pepper.
4 Divide the pimento cheese among six slices of bread and spread it out. Top with the remaining six slices of bread to make sandwiches.
5 Cut the crusts off the sandwiches and discard them. (Or snack on them!)
6 Cut each crustless sandwich into four triangles and arrange them on a platter.
Macadamia Nut Crusted Trout
SERVES 6
INGREDIENTS:
3 whole rainbow trout, deboned
salt and pepper to taste
¾ cup chopped macadamia nuts
¾ cup bread crumbs
½ cup melted butter
6 lemon wedges
METHOD:
1 Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Open up the fish and then place, skin side down, on an oiled baking tray. Season them with salt and pepper.
2 Combine the macadamia nuts with bread crumbs and coat the fish flesh with the mixture.
3 Drizzle the melted butter over the macadamia nut crust.
4 Bake the trout for 12 minutes, and then broil it to brown the crust.
5 Serve with lemon wedges to squeeze on top.
Grape-Nuts Ice Cream
SERVES 6
INGREDIENTS:
1 cup half-and-half
⅔ cup sugar
4 egg yolks
1 cup cream
1 tablespoon vanilla
½ cup Grape-Nuts cereal
METHOD:
1 Heat the half-and-half and the sugar to a simmer, then turn the heat to low.
2 In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with a whisk to break them up and then temper them with ½ cup of the hot half-and-half.
3 Pour the egg yolk mixture into the rest of the heated half-and-half and cook, stirring constantly, until the custard thickens to coat the back of a spoon. Remove from heat.
4 Immediately strain the hot custard into a bowl set in an ice bath.
5 Stir