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Turtle or Terrapin in Batter
Smother the steaks in an egg-batter. Season with pepper, salt, butter, and with a little bread crumbs; fry or broil.
The cooking here is simple enough, but the animal at the center of it is the problem. In a Virginia book of this period, "terrapin" means the diamondback terrapin of the Chesapeake, and that is no longer a creature a home cook may buy and dress.
- The diamondback terrapin is protectedCommercial harvest and sale of diamondback terrapin is prohibited or tightly restricted throughout its range, including a ban on commercial harvest in Maryland and heavy restrictions in Virginia and other Atlantic states. The nineteenth-century appetite this recipe belongs to is one of the causes usually cited for the species' decline, alongside habitat loss and drowning in crab pots.
- "Turtle" in this era often meant sea turtleGreen turtle was the standard turtle of soups and steaks in nineteenth-century American and English cookery. All sea turtles are now protected under the Endangered Species Act and CITES; possessing or selling the meat is a federal offense.
- Wild-caught freshwater turtles carry their own problemsSnapping turtle is still legally taken in some states under license, but wild turtles are long-lived accumulators of mercury and PCBs, and many states post consumption advisories. Reptile meat is also a recognized source of Salmonella.
- No temperature, no time, no quantityThe original gives neither a weight of meat nor any indication of doneness, and "fry or broil" for battered reptile steaks assumes a cook who already knew the animal. There is nothing here to scale or time from.
- If you want the dishUse a current recipe from a source that addresses legally farmed softshell turtle and handling of reptile meat, and check your state's regulations first.
Terrapin was one of the great luxury foods of the Chesapeake, and Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), a compilation of contributions from some 250 ladies of Virginia and her sister states, gives it a good deal of space — several turtle and terrapin receipts sit side by side in the Cookery section. Diamondback terrapin was so abundant in the tidewater that, by a much-repeated tradition, it was fed to enslaved laborers and to farm hands early in the century; by the 1880s Baltimore and Philadelphia restaurants had made stewed terrapin a byword for expense, and the price rose steeply enough that terrapin farming was attempted along the bay. The stock never recovered, and the batter-fried version recorded here — the plainest possible treatment, closer to fried chicken than to the cream-and-sherry stews of the hotel dining rooms — is a reminder of the period when the animal was still cheap enough to treat casually.