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🤢 Frankly Gross 1909

Turtle — notes about using fresh turtle for soup

Keep the turtle in straw in the cellar, water it every two or three hours, and behead it at night.

From
The Cookery Book of Lady Clark of Tillypronie
Published
1909
Yikes Scale
Big yikes

Exactly as printed, 1909

Turtle Soup of dried Turtle. (Lady Hobhouse.) Soak ½ lb. of dried turtle in cold water for 12 hours or more; then put it in a stewpan and cover with fresh cold water; boil quietly for 8 hours, strain off, and cut into pieces about ½ in. square; then add these pieces to 3 qts. of clear strong stock; boil on till the turtle is quite tender.

While boiling add, for 5 minutes only, a sprig of basil, also, at the last, a glass of sherry or Madeira; add the juice of ½ a lemon, if liked. Turtle. Notes about using fresh Turtle for Soup, &c.* The turtle must be put in straw in the cellar and given water every 2 or 3 hours. It should be beheaded at night, and left hanging neck downwards. Mrs. Thomas used mushrooms, ham, knuckle of veal, and some wine, and made, with these and the turtle, thick and clear soup, cutlets in Cardinal sauce, and a dish of the fins dressed like calf's head.

The clear soup was best.

The Cookery Book of Lady Clark of Tillypronie, 1909. Public domain; transcription unaltered.

So what happens if I make it?

The green turtle of nineteenth-century soup is now on CITES Appendix I and protected throughout its range. This is a set of husbandry notes for keeping a protected animal alive in a cellar until you want it.

The matter-of-factness is what dates it. A live turtle was delivered to the house days before the dinner, and someone in the household was responsible for watering it.

Notes from the 21st century

  • Beheaded at night, hung neck down. To bleed it thoroughly before butchery, which is standard practice for any animal. The scheduling is about the next day's dinner.
  • Dried turtle was the alternative. The same book gives a soup from half a pound of dried turtle, soaked twelve hours and boiled eight. It travelled better.
  • The fins are treated as calf's head. Long simmering to gelatine. The comparison tells you what the texture was prized for.

Also in this book

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