{"product_id":"rare-bloomingdales-garden-restaurant-mince-meat-label","title":"Antique Bloomingdale's 🏪 Garden Restaurant Brandied Mince Meat Label New York 1930s Food Ephemera","description":"\u003ch2\u003eWhat Did It Mean When Bloomingdale's Put Its Name on Your Pantry? 🏪 An Antique Garden Restaurant Brandied Mince Meat Label, New York\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSize:\u003c\/strong\u003e 2 1\/2\" x 1 1\/2\" ~ little to no wear.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"max-width:315px;margin:0 auto 20px;\"\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:177.78%;height:0;overflow:hidden;\"\u003e\u003ciframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Ht1l-O4iFzE\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer;autoplay;clipboard-write;encrypted-media;gyroscope;picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is a label for a jar of mince meat that never made it onto a jar. A gold border runs around the edge. At the top sits a cream panel with Garden Restaurant in loose green script, TRADE MARK underneath, and a little round seal with BOB in the middle. Below that, on a pink panel in navy type, it says BRANDIED MINCE MEAT, and then it gives you the whole recipe: \"Combines Apples, Sugar, Raisins, Currants, Beef, Peel, Salt, Spices and Old Brandy. Add one half cup of water to contents. Net Weight 1 3\/4 Lbs.\" The foot line reads DISTRIBUTED BY, then Bloomingdale's with a big swirling B, then NEW YORK. The back is plain paper, with the navy type ghosting through.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003e🏷️ Whose mince meat is it?\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLook at the seal. The store's name and the word BRAND run around the top of the ring, THE SEAL OF QUALITY runs around the bottom, and BOB sits in the middle. That makes it Bloomingdale's own house brand. Now look at the foot line again. It says distributed by, not made by. Some packer filled the jars, and the store stamped its own seal and its own restaurant's name on them.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Garden Restaurant was Bloomingdale's restaurant, up on the seventh floor. A Bloomingdale's ad from October 1931 announces a Playgoers' Forum \"In Bloomingdale's Garden Restaurant, Seventh Floor,\" and Cornell University Library's archives list a Bloomingdale's Garden Restaurant record dated September 7, 1937. Vogue, in the 1940s, wrote that the Garden Restaurant opened onto the Bloomingdale greenhouse, and the store's own bakeries sold the same baked foods the restaurant served. The store used the name as a trademark on the food it sold, and there's a Garden Restaurant olives label too, so mince meat wasn't the only jar on the shelf. Take that jar home and you were bringing a little of the store's dining room into your own kitchen.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003e🥧 Mince meat with the meat still in it\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the old English recipe, and it started out as real meat. Medieval cooks chopped meat together with fruit and spices, and wine, vinegar and later brandy helped it keep. By the 1700s brandy had mostly taken over from the wine and vinegar, and the beef hung on a long time. Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management, in 1861, still wanted a pound and a half of lean beef and three pounds of beef suet with her raisins, currants, apples, candied peel and brandy. Most recipes didn't lose the meat until the middle of the twentieth century. Put her list next to the one on this label and they're close cousins.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePlenty of jars never saw brandy, though. Heinz, making mince meat since 1877, used cider vinegar where many recipes asked for rum, and temperance cooks had been leaving out the liquor since at least 1852, when Mrs. L. G. Abell's Skillful Housewife's Book said a mince pie could be made equally good without wine or brandy. So \"Old Brandy\" printed on a label was a boast.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen Prohibition made brandied mince meat a funny subject. Food wasn't covered by the ban, and some tinned mincemeat ran over 14 percent alcohol. After the dry law passed in 1919, the wets teased the brandy-free pie as \"18th Amendment pie.\" In 1922 the caterers and the liquor men went to court for a cooking exemption, arguing mostly that the public had a right to a proper slice of mince pie. They won. Old-timers who remember mince pie on the Christmas table say the brandy did more than flavor it. It was what kept the filling good.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003e🗽 The store on 59th Street\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBloomingdale's began in 1861 as a hoopskirt and ladies' notions shop run by Benjamin Bloomingdale, with his sons Lyman and Joseph minding the store while he sold hoopskirts to other merchants. On April 17, 1872, Joseph B. and Lyman G. opened their own Great East Side Bazaar. The store moved to 59th Street and Lexington Avenue in 1886 and kept growing, with an addition in 1893 and a big one in 1930 by the architects Starrett \u0026amp; Van Vleck that filled the whole city block and gave the store its Art Deco front on Lexington. The same year, Bloomingdale's joined Federated Department Stores, which is Macy's, Inc. today.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe subway came right to the door. The first line opened in 1904. In July 1915 the Public Service Commission got the right to build an entrance to the Lexington Avenue and 59th Street station inside the store, and trains began stopping there on July 17, 1918. When the store expanded in 1930 it paid for a passage under the local tracks, dedicated November 11, 1930. So a shopper could step off the train into Bloomingdale's, have lunch in the store's own restaurant, and go home with a jar of the store's own mince meat.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003e📅 How old is it?\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNothing on the label is dated, and I put it in the 1930s. The store was advertising its Garden Restaurant by October 1931, and Cornell's record is from 1937. Then there's the brandy. Making mince meat with liquor during Prohibition took a federal permit, and a New Jersey maker's mince meat label from the dry years prints \"Proof Alcohol by Volume 14 Per Cent\" along with its Federal Prohibition permit number. This one names Old Brandy and prints neither, which puts it after Repeal in December 1933. The Gould Amendment, in force from March 3, 1913, said packaged food had to show its weight, measure or count plainly on the outside, and \"Net Weight 1 3\/4 Lbs.\" is that line.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003e🎄 About these labels\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll of mine are unused, with a bright gold border. Rare, too. Nobody else has this label for sale. Frame it small with a holiday recipe card or a pie tin, put it with other New York department store pieces, or give it to somebody whose family never let a Christmas go by without mince pie. The supply is finite, and once these last few are framed, they'll be very difficult to acquire.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"relatedBlock\"\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🔎 More From The Vintage \u0026amp; Antique Gifts Archive\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/bricks-old-homestead-oval-mince-meat-label-treasures\"\u003eAntique Brick's Old Homestead Mince Meat Label 🏡 NOS 1930s Oval Farm Scene, Edgar Brick \u0026amp; Sons, Crosswicks NJ\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/rare-lambrechts-mince-meat-label-ny-nj\"\u003eAntique Lambrecht's Mince Meat Jar Label 🏷️ Lambrecht Creamery New York \u0026amp; New Jersey NOS 1930s\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/large-antique-homestead-mince-meat-label-farm-scene-decor\"\u003eAntique Brick's Old Homestead Mince Meat Label 🏚️ LARGE RECTANGULAR Farm Scene, Edgar Brick \u0026amp; Sons NJ, NOS 1920s\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40769710653605,"sku":"VAG-7034817904805","price":8.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0597\/2718\/4037\/files\/il_fullxfull.4123888115_kand.jpg?v=1785353578","url":"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/rare-bloomingdales-garden-restaurant-mince-meat-label","provider":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","version":"1.0","type":"link"}