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Turtle Fish
Take equal quantities of fresh ling, haddock, or codling, and of skate, cut the fish into neat slices, wash and clean them, and fry them in hot fat till they are lightly browned. Drain them, and stew them in good gravy thickened with flour and butter, and seasoned rather highly with salt and cayenne. Add the meat of a lobster and a dozen or more oysters with their liquor. A little wine may be added or not. Serve the preparation in a soup tureen. A couple of cods' sounds, stewed in spinach-juice till they are coloured green, and afterwards cut into neat squares and put into the gravy, may be added to the preparation, as an imitation of the green fat of the turtle. Time, altogether, about three-quarters of an hour.
This is a mock turtle built from fish rather than calf's head, and it lives or dies on restraint with the shellfish: the lobster and oysters go in at the very end and need only to heat through.
- The fishLing and codling (a small cod) both belong to the cod order and cook alike; any firm white fish — cod, haddock, pollock, hake — works. Skate is there for its gelatinous texture and faintly sweet flesh; skate wing is still sold, and a thick piece cut across the cartilage holds its shape in the stew.
- "Good gravy"In a book of this date the phrase usually meant a well-flavoured meat stock, though a well-reduced fish stock suits this dish. Thicken with a blond roux of equal butter and flour — roughly 1 oz of each per pint. No quantity is given in the original.
- OystersA dozen shucked oysters with their liquor need about two minutes in the hot gravy, off the boil. The three-quarters of an hour in the original is the total for frying and stewing the fish, not a simmering time for shellfish, which turn rubbery in minutes.
- Cods' soundsThe swim bladder of the cod, once a common fishmonger's item sold salted or fresh, and now hard to find outside specialist suppliers. Their job here is purely textural mimicry of turtle green fat; leave them out and the dish loses nothing in flavour.
- Spinach juiceBlanched spinach pressed or blitzed and strained gives a strong green liquor. It colours but does not really flavour, and it dulls to olive if boiled hard — an accurate reflection of Victorian food colouring practice.
- Cayenne"Rather highly" seasoned suggests a noticeable heat; a scant quarter teaspoon in a quart is closer to modern taste, and it is easier to judge if added towards the end.
- WineMadeira and sherry were the wines usually named in turtle and mock-turtle recipes of the period; a glass stirred in during the last few minutes.
- Yield and serviceRoughly 2 lb of fish plus a lobster and oysters serves six as a first course. It is served from a tureen and eaten with a spoon, so cut the fish into pieces that fit one.
Real turtle soup was one of the most expensive dishes of the nineteenth century, and a great deal of what was published under the name was an imitation of it. Mock turtle usually meant calf's head, dressed to suggest the gelatinous "green fat" that gourmets prized in the genuine article; this fish version is a further step of substitution, aimed at a household that wanted the ceremony of a turtle tureen without either turtle or a calf's head. The cods' sounds stained with spinach juice are the giveaway — mimicry rather than flavour is the whole point. Cassell's appeared in an era when tinned and dried turtle, turtle herbs and "turtle soup essence" were all sold commercially, and imitation was so routine that no apology was thought necessary.