Turtle Garnish

Brains, beef palates, truffles and olives, warmed in the turtle's own liquor and floated on the soup.

From: The Cook Book by Oscar of the Waldorf
Published: 1896
Yikes Scale: Big yikes

Exactly as printed, 1896

This is made of mushrooms, truffles, brains, beef palates, olives, gherkins and chicken quenelles, as follows: Prepare and cook some mushrooms, large whole truffles and brains, also small rounds of beef palate, chicken quenelles moulded with teaspoons, stoned olives and small balls of gherkins, cut out with a cutter. Put the mushrooms, truffles, palate, quenelles and olives into a sautepan with a little of the liquor from the turtle it is to be served with; let it thicken over the fire, and it is ready for use. The brains and gherkins are arranged on the top of the other ingredients.

The Cook Book by Oscar of the Waldorf, 1896. Public domain; transcription unaltered.

So what happens if I make it?

The turtle behind a garnish like this was almost certainly the green sea turtle, now on CITES Appendix I and protected everywhere. The liquor is the whole point of the preparation and there is no substitute for it.

The brains bring the second problem. Bovine and calf brain is specified risk material and is out of the food supply regardless of what it is being floated in.

Notes from the 21st century

Beef palate was a garnish staple. Blanched, scraped and simmered for hours until gelatinous, then cut in rounds. Every grand hotel kitchen kept it.
This is assembly, not cookery. Seven components, each cooked separately, combined at the end. It is a measure of how many hands a hotel kitchen had.
Turtle soup is still made. In Louisiana, from alligator snapping turtle or increasingly from beef and veal. The mock version outlived the real one.

Also in this book

Almond Milk — Four ounces of almonds to a pint of water — “either bitter or sweet,” says Oscar, as though it made no difference.
Braised Calf's Head (with Calf's Head, Financiere) — Boned, stuffed and sewn shut — and the Financière version forms the brains into cakes and skewers cockscombs on top.
Cleaning Codfish — Cod is crimped by being notched with a knife while still partly alive. Some cooks object.

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