Home › Soups › Green Turtle Soup
Green Turtle Soup
1 10-lb. turtle 4 qts. cold water 1 tablespoon salt 1/3 cup butter 4 tablespoons Gold Medal flour 1 cup Madeira wine 10 whole cloves 1/2 teaspoon peppercorns 2 bay leaves, 1/2 bunch herbs 2 onions 2 tablespoons parsley minced 8 hard boiled eggs Kill the turtle by cutting off head with a very sharp knife. Hang up by the tail and let it bleed for twelve hours. Separate upper from lower shell, being careful not to cut the gall bladder; cut the meat from the breast in slices and reserve; remove the gall bladder and entrails and throw them away. Cut the fins off as near the shell as possible. Place the upper and lower shell in a large kettle, pour over 4 quarts of cold water, simmer gently until bones fall apart. Put into soup kettle the head, fins, liver, lights, heart and all the meat; add all the seasonings, cover with liquor in which the shells were boiled and simmer until meat is thoroughly done; strain the mixture through a fine sieve. Melt the butter and brown in it the onion chopped fine, add the flour and cook together until brown. Add a pint of the soup, a little at a time, and cook until smooth, combine with rest of the soup. Add the cut meat, the hard boiled eggs chopped fine and lastly the wine. CHOWDERS Corn Chowder, No. 1 1 doz. ears sweet corn or 1 qt. canned corn 1 pt. potatoes diced 1 1/2 inch cube of fat salt pork 1 small onion 2 tablespoons Gold Medal flour 1 qt. milk 2 teaspoons salt 1/8 teaspoons pepper 2 hard boiled eggs If fresh corn is used cut each row of kernels and scrape corn from cob. Boil cobs twenty minutes with water to cover. Cook potatoes in boiling salted water, drain. Chop the fat and try out in kettle. Add onion and cook five minutes. Dredge with the flour. Add 1 cup of water in which cobs were cooked; potatoes, corn, milk and seasonings. Simmer ten minutes. Cut eggs in rings and add to the chowder when ready to serve.
Corn Chowder, No. 2 1 qt. raw sweet corn 1 pt. potato dice 1 teaspoon salt 1 saltspoon pepper 1/4 cup butter 2 tablespoons Gold Medal flour 1 pt. milk 1 pt. croutons 2 hard boiled eggs Cut each row of kernels, and scrape the raw corn from the cob. Boil the cobs twenty minutes in water to cover. Pare and cut the potatoes into small dice. Pour boiling water over them, drain and let them stand while the corn-cobs are boiling. Remove the cobs, add the potatoes, salt and pepper. When the potatoes are nearly done, add the corn and milk and cook five minutes. Cook the flour in the hot butter, add 1 cup of the corn liquor, and when thick stir it into the chowder. Add the eggs, whites chopped fine, and yolks rubbed through a strainer. Serve with croutons.--Mrs. D. A. Lincoln.
The first recipe on this page cannot be made today, and not only for legal reasons. The two corn chowders that follow it in the same block of text are unrelated and unaffected.
- The species is protectedGreen turtle (Chelonia mydas) is listed on CITES Appendix I and, in the United States, under the Endangered Species Act, where separate populations are listed as endangered or threatened. Taking, trading or possessing one is illegal in most jurisdictions, as it is for the other sea turtles a 1900s cook could have obtained.
- The twelve-hour bleedHanging a butchered animal to drain for twelve hours, with no suggestion of chilling, is the central instruction, and it leaves several pounds of meat and offal in the bacterial growth range for half a day before cooking begins. The later simmering would kill most bacteria but not toxins already produced.
- Reptile meat carries specific pathogensTurtles and other reptiles are common asymptomatic carriers of Salmonella, including serotypes rarely seen in poultry, and the shell, head and entrails handled here are the likeliest sources. Cross-contamination of the reserved raw breast slices is the practical risk.
- The gall bladder warning is doing real workThe recipe raises it twice, once as an explicit warning not to cut it. Ruptured gall taints everything it touches beyond recovery, and "lights" — the lungs — cannot legally be sold as food in the United States.
- If you want the flavourUse a current recipe for mock turtle soup, or a clear beef or veal consommé finished with Madeira. Do not attempt this method with a freshwater or farmed turtle either; the pathogen and butchering problems are identical.
- On the chowders (safe to make)A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. "Try out" the salt pork means render it slowly until the fat runs and the dice crisp. Corn Chowder No. 2 needs no separate potato boiling — the diced potato cooks in the corn-cob liquor.
- Chowder yieldEach version makes roughly two quarts, four to six servings. Neither should boil once the milk goes in, or it will break.
Green turtle soup was the definitive luxury soup of the nineteenth century, a fixture of civic banquets, aldermen's dinners and steamship menus on both sides of the Atlantic. Live turtles were shipped north from the Caribbean and the Florida Keys and kept in tanks at hotels and turtle warehouses until wanted, which is why a general-purpose flour promotion like this one could print the recipe at all: a cook of the period could plausibly order one. The demand it represents is a large part of why the species is now protected. The same appetite produced mock turtle soup, built on a calf's head and heavily spiced to imitate the real thing, which outlived its model in cookbooks and in canned form. The second of the two chowders that follow is credited to Mrs. D. A. Lincoln, the first principal of the Boston Cooking School and author of the book Fannie Farmer later revised; her name on a recipe was a mark of authority that flour companies were keen to borrow.