1934 - Food And Drink

Food And Drink

Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is produced commercially for the first time in the United States, which has depended until now on the flavor enhancer Ajinimoto imported from Japan (see 1908; 1947).

Morton's Salt founder and president Joy Morton dies at his 419-acre rural estate outside Chicago May 9 at age 78. The son of the man who founded Arbor Day, Morton opened his arboretum to the public several years ago.

A new chilling process for meat cargoes improves on the process used in 1880 on the S.S. Strathleven.

Girl Scout cookies are introduced by some accounts at Philadelphia, where young women demonstrate their baking skills using ovens on display in the appliance showrooms of the Philadelphia Gas Works. By other accounts, Girl Scouts baked cookies beginning in the 1920s for fund-raising programs at the suggestion of Bucharest-born New York publicist Bella Spewack (née Cohen), but the national organization that was founded in 1912 will later say the tradition began in 1934, when Scouts at Philadelphia produced shortbread and sugar cookies to raise money for Camp Indian Run, a summer retreat about 50 miles west of the city. The Scouts sell the cookies for 23¢ per one-pound box, net 1¢ per box to benefit local troops.

Beer baron August Anheuser Busch of Anheuser-Busch commits suicide at his Grant's Farm estate outside St. Louis February 13 at age 68. He has been suffering intense pain from heart disease, edema, and gout.

Pepsi-Cola is acquired by Walter Mack, who will promote Pepsi's 12-ounce bottle to challenge Coca-Cola (see 1933; 1939).

Royal Crown Cola is introduced by Nehi Corp. (see Diet-Rite, 1962).

Seagram's 7 Crown is introduced by Distillers Corp.-Seagram, which will make it the top-selling U.S. whiskey brand (see 1933; 1947).

Monarch Wine Co. is founded at Brooklyn, N.Y., to produce sacramental wines for use on religious occasions in place of homemade wines. Monarch will lease the name Manischewitz to gain acceptance for the strong, aromatic wine it presses from native American vitis labrusca grapes (see Manischewitz 1888); it will bottle wines under 17 other labels as it grows to become the largest U.S. producer of fruit wines (including blackberry, cherry, elderberry, and loganberry). Producing more champagne than America imports from France, Monarch's winery will grow to cover four city blocks, and Manischewitz wines will become popular with gentiles as well as Jews.

Chicago candy maker Frank C. Mars dies of a heart attack and kidney disease at Baltimore April 8 at age 50, leaving Mars Candy Co. to his second wife, Ethel, his daughter by his second marriage, and his son Forrest E., whom he banished 2 years ago to England (see 3 Musketeers, 1932; M&Ms, 1941).

Mechanical refrigeration pioneer Carl von Linde dies at Munich November 16 at age 92.