The Cookie that Comes Out in the Cold

[Brian 972]

From New York Times

"My mother used to buy them on special occasions, and I used to sneak down to the kitchen and steal them," said Mr. Boxer, who grew up to be an owner of Rare Bar & Grill, a restaurant in the Shelburne Murray Hill Hotel at 303 Lexington Avenue, near 37th Street. "And then she'd say, 'Somebody last night had three Mallomars. Wonder who it was?' "

Producing Mallomars in the 1950's at a Nabisco plant. Manufactured from September to March, the cookie originated in 1913 in New Jersey.

That question comes up at this time of year, for like Beaujolais nouveau, Mallomars are not a year-round delicacy, not even in the New York area, where 70 percent of Mallomars are sold. Mallomars return to supermarket shelves in the fall after a warm-weather break. But Mallomars connoisseurs do not celebrate by holding tastings of the new batch or by calling friends to announce "les Mallomars sont arrivés."

There are those who say that Mallomars fans just don't want to share that first bite of the season, a bite "so fresh it would crunch," said Jodi Gray Kahn, an English teacher at Great Neck North High School on Long Island. To hear her tell it, her father seemed to enjoy the first-bite moment even more than she did.

So now is as good a time as any to investigate this New York-area phenomenon, the arrival of the beloved Mallomars, and to plumb some of their mysteries: Why do they melt in hot weather when science has come up with ways to keep pretty much anything from melting? Does the answer, whatever it is, have anything to do with the fact that this cookie, born in New Jersey, is now made in Canada? And what about the Whippet, a Canadian cookie that is about the same size and shape, but packs more calories, more carbohydrates and more sugar?

Dreaming of polishing off a whole box in one sitting, Mallomars lovers hoard these three-part cookies through the long months of summer. Inside each box are 18 Mallomars. Each is about the diameter of a medium-size man's watch, with a beret-shaped marshmallow sitting atop a vanilla cookie. The whole thing is covered in chocolate.

If there is something vaguely quaint about Mallomars because they are available only during certain seasons, there is also something venerable. They are as old as the Federal Reserve System and Camel cigarettes. Unlike crossword puzzles, which also made their debut in 1913, they have not undergone a name change. When The New York World published that first puzzle, it was a "word-cross." Mallomars did not begin life in 1913 as Marsomalls.

Nowadays Mallomars are a nine-letter clue for the word addictive. "My wife is smart enough not to have them in the house - I just can't resist," said Michael Stafford, a Long Island lawyer. "You put one of those boxes in front of me, and it's gone."

So many Mallomars, so many questions. To grammarians, Mallomars are a problem: What is the singular of Mallomars, anyway? To Oprah's Book Club, Mallomars are one of the basic food groups in the 1997 novel "She's Come Undone." (Along with Pepsi and potato chips.) Mallomars also made an appearance in "When Harry Met Sally." The script was written by Nora Ephron, whose other credits include the film "Cookie." One and a half hours, but not a documentary about Mallomars.

No doubt some like them hot, or at least as warm as room temperature, but many like their Mallomars chilled or frozen. "You have to have one box in the freezer and two backups, on the top shelf," said Peter Glazier, a restaurateur who operates Michael Jordan's Steakhouse in Grand Central Terminal.

He worries about "the Mallomars police" - his wife, Penny, who worries that he will gain weight snacking on little diet wreckers. But Mallomars have only 110 calories a serving - and a serving of Mallomars, according to the "nutrition facts" box on the carton, is not one but two cookies. Forty-five of those calories are from fat, 5 grams' worth. Two Mallomars have 12 grams of sugar and 35 milligrams of sodium. The good news is that they have no cholesterol.

Mallomars' origins are in New Jersey. Kraft, whose Nabisco division markets Mallomars, says the first buyer was a grocer in West Hoboken, which was consolidated to form Union City in 1925. Their New York-area roots are the reason Mallomars sales are so heavily concentrated in the Northeast, said Laurie Guzzinati, a spokeswoman for Kraft.

But they are made 350 miles away, in Toronto, the home territory of Whippets, which arouse the kind of passion among Canadians that Mallomars arouse among New Yorkers. "In my head, they taste the same," said Barry Lazar, author of "Taste of Montreal," "although I think of Mallomars as a little sweeter."

Maybe, maybe not. "I couldn't tell the difference at all," said Andrew F. Smith of Brooklyn, a food historian who was the keynote speaker earlier in the week at a food conference in Montreal. To keep Mallomars from going soft in warm weather, the factory halts production in March and resumes in September, but it takes time for them to make it to store shelves. There are those who wax poetic about Mallomars during the off-season, and those who say the seasonal schedule is behind the times.

Or maybe the problem is the pure chocolate. "If they can produce chocolate that can survive in Saudi Arabia, why don't they do that with Mallomars?" asked Richard J. S. Gutman, the director of the Culinary Archives & Museum at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, R.I. (For her part, Ms. Guzzinati of Kraft said the company is "looking at ways for them to be available year-round," though not in 2006.)

And the singular-or-plural question? "Mallomars is plural, because that's what's trademarked," she said.

To sum it up, these are the best damn cookies in the world, and mostly New York gets them in the Fall and Winter. A delicacy indeed.

[Icecoldbagey 35]

We get them in England, but all year round. They're called chocolate teacakes

[Crazee 204]

Never liked them that much. Can't beat custard cream's.

[Brian 972]

We get them in England, but all year round. They're called chocolate teacakes

Those seem to be a little different. Is the cookie part soft and chocolate? Ours are graham cracker.

[Icecoldbagey 35]

Hmm yeah you're probably right, ours are quite soft

[Indy 350]

Rich tea, because i'm a boring bastard.

[Mercy 30]

Oreos FTW