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Turtle Soup, Mock
Put into a stewpan three pounds of fillet of veal, and three pounds of leg of beef, in one and a half inch square pieces, with three-quarters of a pound of butter, six onions, and a bouquet garni. Stir till of a light brown colour; dredge in six ounces of flour, add four quarts of stock and a pint of Madeira, salt and pepper. Stir till boiling; add half a calf's head, previously boned, and boil for three hours. Strain the broth, and simmer for one hour, skimming frequently. Take out the head cut it into inch squares, and add it again to the soup before serving.
A full Victorian banquet soup: roughly six pounds of meat plus half a calf's head and four quarts of stock. Everything hinges on getting a proper calf's head, or on choosing a sensible substitute for it.
- The calf's headThis is the whole point of the dish — the gelatinous skin and cheek meat imitate the texture of sea turtle. A butcher can usually order one with notice, boned and split. Failing that, use about 2 lb of veal cheek plus a split veal foot or two pig's trotters for body, and add a piece of poached calf's tongue for the cut squares.
- YieldFour quarts of stock plus a pint of Madeira gives roughly 4½ quarts of liquid at the outset; after three hours' boiling and a further hour's simmering it will have reduced, so expect something under 4 quarts of finished soup — a dozen or so servings. Halving or quartering it works without adjustment beyond the cooking times.
- VesselA "stewpan" here means a wide, heavy pan with a lid. You need one of at least 10-12 quarts to brown six pounds of meat and then take four quarts of liquid on top of it.
- Browning the meat and flour"Stir till of a light brown colour" is the flavour foundation, and it takes far longer than it reads — 20 to 30 minutes over medium heat with the meat in batches if the pan crowds. The six ounces of flour dredged in afterwards must cook in the fat for several minutes before the stock goes in, or the soup tastes pasty.
- "Boil" means simmerThree hours at a true rolling boil will emulsify the fat into the broth and cloud it badly. Hold it at a bare tremble, lid ajar, and skim as you go.
- The second simmerThe extra hour after straining is a clarifying and reducing step, not a cooking one. Skim persistently — with this much butter and this much beef there will be a great deal of fat, and chilling the strained broth overnight so the fat lifts off in a cake is easier than skimming hot.
- Bouquet garniFor a soup this size, use a generous bundle: parsley stalks, thyme, two bay leaves, and a few celery tops, tied with string so it can be pulled out at straining.
- MadeiraA dry or medium Sercial or Verdelho, not a sweet Malmsey and not supermarket "Madeira cooking wine," which is salted. Some cooks hold back a splash to stir in at the end, since three hours of simmering burns off most of the aroma.
- Traditional garnishCassell's leaves it bare, but many period versions of mock turtle were sent up with small forcemeat balls and hard-boiled egg yolks, with lemon and cayenne offered at table.
Mock turtle soup exists because real turtle soup was one of the most conspicuous luxuries of the Georgian and Victorian table — live green sea turtles were shipped from the West Indies to London and Bristol at enormous cost, and civic feasts were judged partly on whether turtle appeared. The imitation, generally traced to the mid-eighteenth century, works by exploiting the fact that what diners prized in turtle was not really a flavour but a texture: the soft, gelatinous, faintly glutinous meat of the shell margins. A boned calf's head, cut in cubes and suspended in a rich brown Madeira broth, reproduces that texture closely enough that the substitution became a respected dish in its own right rather than a confessed economy. By the time Cassell's compiled this entry the mock version was far commoner in domestic cookery books than the genuine article, and it had passed into the general culture — Lewis Carroll's Mock Turtle, drawn with a calf's head and hooves, is a joke that assumed every reader knew what went into the pot. Green sea turtles are now protected under international law, so the imitation is the only version left.