ey
were we to do business on that basis. Yet there was no stimulation of
sales due to this reduction in price.

Many good suggestions came in; among these was the suggestion that the
product lent itself nicely to an ice cream topping; by mixing it with
honey or with syrup we interested our largest manufacturer of ice cream
in this locality and he did a lot of experimental selling. He was very
cooperative. He also sold it in his branch stores as milk shakes;
everybody liked it. No complaints whatsoever except that the manager
said it was too expensive to compete with a chocolate flavor on which he
made much more money. Finally this whole thing fizzled out and was
discontinued.

The next experiment was with candy; as a candy center it was one of the
finest tasting confections that had ever been made, but the oil which
would ooze through the chocolate coatings prevented the practical use of
it. You see, the filbert has about 65% oil, and when it is ground into
a fine, creamy butter, this oil will come out and sometimes be an inch
or more in depth over the top of the butter in the glass container in
which it was marketed. So we investigated several methods by which we
could eliminate the oil. We could pour it off and sell the oil
separately; we could emulsify the product with the addition of certain
emulsifiers, so as to keep the oil mixed with the starch and protein of
the filbert nut. We tried many ways; there is only one method that we
haven't used and that is to combine solidified or hydrogenized peanut
oil with the filbert butter in order to prevent this liquid oil from
rising to to the top of the product. The reason we did not do this is
quite apparent--we did not want to mix peanuts and filberts, as we
considered peanut butter a cheaper and inferior product. We could not
hope to compete with peanut butter with the prices already set for
peanut butter recognized by the trade.

Among the products that came to our attention, however, was one which
had both filbert butter and solidified peanut oil in it. When we tested
this product among many of our friends, they declared it tasted too much
like peanut butter. It spoiled the delicate, fine flavor of the natural
filbert butter (which we were marketing without adding any sort of
seasoning, and without roasting the product the way peanuts are roasted
before they are ground into butter.)

Now, if any of you readers think that we have left out something
important which w