Little-Known Brooklyn Businesses. S. Gumpert & Co.

When first I pulled  this recipe booklet from S. Gumpert & Co. out of its file, the synthetic orange and pink sherbert colors of the cover illustration suggested a company that manufactured cheap water ices.  But to open the booklet at any page was to realize that in this instance, Gumpert's  interest was less in the ices themselves but in their ingredients. A glance at a recipe shows that this sorbet is destined for no puny domestic freezer.

The secret to fine water ices, it turns out, is a substance produced by the Gumpert Company called "Textor."  "No more pale, syrupy, watered down water ices when Textor has been used. Textor-made ices...are always smooth in texture and of proper consistency." At the time the undated recipe booklet was produced, the company was based in Brooklyn's Bush Terminal, home to many companies that packaged and bottled foods brought into the docks.

But Gumpert's, (which still exists but seems now to be based in Canada), must have made puddings too, because a 1937 Eagle article dwells on one particular Gumpert employee, Mr George Trenner, whose job was to taste puddings--all day, every day. In a laboratory in the Bush Terminal building, Mr Trenner spent his days "sipping such items as butterscotch filling, devil's food cake, chocolate malted milks, cream desserts, double Dutch chocolate, fancy fruits, fudges, gelatines, meringues, tutti frutti flavoring and frosteds." Not surprisingly, he commented, "My stomach is knocked out."