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Green Turtle Soup
1 10-lb. turtle 6 qts. cold water 1 tablespoon salt 10 whole cloves 1/2 teaspoon peppercorns 2 bayleaves 1/2 bunch herbs 2 tablespoons parsley, minced 1/3 cup shortening 2 onions, minced 4 tablespoons flour 8 hard cooked eggs, chopped fine 1 tablespoon vinegar 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 four quarts cold water, simmer gently until bones fall apart. Put into soup kettle, head, fins, liver, lights, heart and all meat; add all seasonings, cover with liquor in which 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, 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 cooked eggs chopped fine, and lastly the vinegar. Serves ten.
This is a period recipe for the green sea turtle, an animal that can no longer legally be bought, killed or eaten in most of the world. The notes below explain why the page is now a historical document rather than a set of instructions.
- The animal is protectedThe green turtle (Chelonia mydas) is listed on Appendix I of CITES and is protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act and comparable laws elsewhere. Taking, killing, possessing or selling one is a criminal offence, and that applies to imported meat and shell as well.
- No substitution is being offeredSnapping turtle and farmed softshell are sometimes suggested as stand-ins, but the butchery, bleeding and long shell-boiling described here are written for a 10-lb sea turtle and should not be transferred wholesale to another species. If turtle soup is the object, work from a current recipe for a legally farmed animal.
- The twelve-hour bleedHanging a carcass for twelve hours before it is drawn is one of the most dangerous steps on the page. Turtles carry Salmonella as normal gut flora, and half a day of ambient holding with the entrails still in place is exactly the condition in which it multiplies.
- Gall bladder and entrailsThe instruction not to cut the gall bladder is sound as far as it goes -- spilled bile makes the meat bitter -- but the recipe also directs that the liver, lights and heart go into the pot after that long unrefrigerated hang. Turtle offal is additionally a known accumulator of heavy metals and marine biotoxins.
- ChelonitoxismSea turtle flesh has been responsible for repeated outbreaks of chelonitoxin poisoning, which can be fatal and is not destroyed by cooking. The source of the toxin is not settled -- algae in the animals' diet are the usual suspect -- and it appears unpredictably, with no way to detect it in the kitchen.
- Fat and flourFor the record, the ingredient list calls for shortening while the method says to melt the butter -- the sort of drift that turns up when a house recipe is reset for print. The roux itself is a conventional brown one, cooked until it colours before the soup is worked in.
- Reading it as a documentThe proportions are worth noting even if the dish is closed to us: eight hard-cooked eggs and a tablespoon of vinegar finishing ten portions, with the breast meat sliced and returned rather than left in the strained stock.
Green turtle soup was the definitive luxury soup of the English-speaking table from the eighteenth century until well into the twentieth, and live turtles were shipped north from the Caribbean and Florida keys specifically to be kept in tanks at hotels and clubs until wanted. Its prestige is the reason for mock turtle soup, built on a calf's head to imitate the gelatinous texture of the shell meat, and for the "turtle herbs" sold to season both. The commercial fishery that made a 10-lb turtle an ordinary market purchase is precisely what drove the species to the protected status it now holds.