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TURTLE SOUP MOCK (made with Cow-heel)
Wash, scald, and thoroughly cleanse a cow-heel, split it in halves, and put it into a large stewpan with three-pennyworth of fresh bones broken into small pieces, six ounces of lean uncooked ham, or a large piece of bacon-rind, three onions, three carrots, a turnip, a handful of parsley, a sprig of thyme, two bay-leaves, two cloves, six allspice, eight peppercorns, a pinch of cayenne, three sage-leaves, half a dozen outer sticks of celery, and a tea-spoonful of sugar. Pour over these ingredients a gallon of cold water. Bring the liquor to the boil, skim carefully, and simmer gently for six hours. Take out the cow-heel, remove the bones, and press the meat between two dishes. Let the soup simmer another hour with the bones and trimmings; strain it, pour it out, let it stand until cold, and remove the fat from the top. Cut the meat into neat squares, and dredge a little flour over them. Fry in hot fat till they are lightly and equally browned, then drain them on a sieve. Dissolve four ounces of butter in a frying-pan, and stir into this three table-spoonfuls of flour, a tea-spoonful of curry-powder, and a tea-spoonful of dry mustard. Beat this mixture with the back of a wooden spoon, moisten with half a pint of soup, and add a tea-spoonful of anchovy sauce. Boil for twenty minutes, strain, and mix it with the rest of the stock. Put in the pieces of meat, and simmer them gently till they are heated through; add a glassful of sherry or Madeira, and a dessert-spoonful of lemon-juice; put some quenelles into the tureen, pour the soup over, and serve immediately. Time, eight hours. Probable cost, cow-heel, 4d. to 8d. each. Sufficient for twelve persons or more.
A long but forgiving recipe: the whole point is the gelatine drawn out of the cow-heel, which gives the soup the sticky, lip-coating body that real turtle soup was prized for. Nothing here is difficult, but almost everything is measured in shopkeeper's terms rather than cook's.
- Cow-heelA split beef foot, still sold by halal and Caribbean butchers and often labelled cow foot; ask for it split, as a domestic knife will not do it. One foot is usually somewhere around 2-3 lb and is the main source of the soup's gelatine, though the fresh bones and rind add to it; veal knuckle and trotter are the nearest substitute.
- Three-pennyworth of fresh bonesA shop measure with no fixed weight, and what a few pence bought cannot now be recovered; 2 to 3 lb of beef bones, sawn small, is a reasonable modern reading.
- The gallonAn imperial gallon, 4.5 litres or about 19 US cups. It should just cover the ingredients in a large stockpot; top up during the six hours if the bones become exposed.
- Ham and bacon-rindSix ounces of lean uncooked ham means raw cured ham, not sandwich ham. A piece of unsmoked bacon rind or a hock end does the same job, which is salt and background savour rather than meatiness.
- Skim before you season the tongueSalt -- The soup is salted only by the ham, and the reduction over seven hours concentrates that. Taste at the strain stage before adding any salt of your own.
- Chill overnight"Let it stand until cold" is best done in the refrigerator overnight; the fat lifts off in a clean disc, and the stock beneath should set to a firm jelly. If it does not set, it has not extracted enough gelatine and should be reduced further.
- The curry rouxFour ounces of butter to three tablespoons of flour is a loose, buttery roux, cooked with curry powder and mustard and then let down with soup. Boiling it twenty minutes and straining it is deliberate: it cooks out the raw flour and the spice grit, so do not shortcut to a quick whisked slurry.
- QuenellesSmall poached forcemeat dumplings, usually veal or chicken pounded with panada and egg, shaped between two spoons and poached in stock. They go into the tureen cooked; the hot soup only warms them.
- Time and yieldEight hours is honest, though most of it is unattended simmering, and the overnight chill makes this a two-day soup. The book gives it as sufficient for twelve persons or more.
Mock turtle exists because real turtle soup was one of the great luxuries of Georgian and Victorian dining, made from live green turtles shipped from the West Indies and served at civic banquets at ruinous cost. Cooks imitated it with cheap gelatinous cuts, most famously a boiled calf's head, whose soft glutinous meat stood in for the turtle's; Cassell's version substitutes cow-heel, which is cheaper still, hence the note that the principal ingredient costs fourpence to eightpence. The curry powder, mustard, cayenne, anchovy and fortified wine are not seasoning for beef but an attempt to reproduce the murky, spiced, faintly marine flavour that diners associated with the genuine article. The dish is a good measure of the book's readership: households that wanted the shape of an aldermanic dinner without an alderman's budget. Green turtles are now protected, so the mock version has outlived the thing it imitated.