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Turtle Soup, Mock, Clear
Prepare, soak, and parboil the head as in last recipe but one. Cut the meat into neat squares, and set these aside, simmer the herbs and vegetables in a pint of stock for two hours, and afterwards strain this through a tamis; the flour must, of course, be omitted. Add it to the rest of the stock, and clarify this by stirring into it when cool the whites of two eggs mixed with a little water, whisking it over the fire till it boils, boiling gently for half an hour, letting it stand to settle for a quarter of an hour, then straining it through a jelly-bag till it is clear. Put the pieces of calf's head into the soup, boil them gently till tender, add a glassful of good wine and a little lemon-juice, and serve very hot with a few quenelles.
This is a consommé rather than the thick brown mock turtle most people picture, and it depends entirely on two things: a properly gelatinous calf's head stock and a clean raft when you clarify. Note that the recipe is written as a variation, so it assumes you have the preceding page in front of you.
- The cross-reference"Prepare, soak, and parboil the head as in last recipe but one" sends you back to the earlier page for the head: splitting, soaking in cold water, and parboiling. Note that only a parboil is called for at this stage; the meat is finished later in the soup. Without that step you have no stock and no meat, so read the earlier recipe before starting.
- Sourcing the headCalf's head is a special order from a halal, kosher or old-fashioned butcher, and often arrives already split and skinned. Two split calf's feet, or a pig's trotter, will supply the same body if the head yields little gelatine; the point of the cut is collagen, which is what makes the finished soup shimmer rather than sit flat.
- Tamis and jelly-bagA tamis is a drum sieve; a fine chinois or a sieve lined with a double layer of muslin does the job. The jelly-bag is a conical flannel or muslin bag hung above a bowl — line a colander with dampened muslin and let the soup drip through without pressing, or it will cloud again.
- ClarifyingThe hinge of the recipe. The stock must be cold or barely tepid when the egg whites go in, and you whisk only until it comes to the boil; after that leave it strictly alone. Stirring the set raft breaks it and returns every particle to the liquid.
- "Boiling gently"Read this as a bare simmer rather than a true boil; the book gives no temperature. A rolling boil will emulsify fat back into a clarified consomme and undo the half hour you have just spent.
- A glassful of wineGenuinely imprecise in the original. A Victorian wineglassful is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz; start there. Madeira or dry sherry is the usual choice for mock turtle.
- QuenellesSmall poached forcemeat dumplings, traditionally veal or chicken bound with panade and cream, shaped between two spoons and poached in salted water below simmering point. Poach them separately and add at the last minute — poaching them in the soup will cloud it.
- YieldNot stated. The recipe gives only the pint of stock used for the herbs and vegetables, not the total volume of head stock, so no portion count can be derived from the text.
Mock turtle soup was invented to imitate the real thing, which by the middle of the eighteenth century had become a byword for luxury in England: live green turtles were shipped from the West Indies to London and Bristol and served at civic dinners and livery halls. Calf's head was the substitute of choice because the gelatinous skin, once boiled, has much the same slippery, faintly translucent bite as turtle fat, and the herbs, wine and lemon carried the rest of the illusion. Cassell's gives several versions, thickened and clear, and this one belongs to the more formal end of the repertoire — clarifying with egg white and straining through a jelly-bag is the technique of a household with a cook and time to spare, aimed at a soup that looks like amber in the plate. Green turtle is now a protected species and the original dish has effectively vanished from the table, which leaves the imitation outliving the thing it imitated.