Important: Safety Warning
This page describes collecting wild birds' eggs, shooting birds for specimens, or similar practices. These activities are now illegal under wildlife-protection laws, including the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and they contributed to the decline of the very species described.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Fricassee of Snapper or Gopher
Plunge turtle into boiling water to loosen skin. Pull off skin, open shell, and clean. Cut meat into small dice, season with salt, pepper, 1 tablespoon mushroom catsup, 1 tablespoon grated onion, and a dash of Kitchen Bouquet. Put into saucepan with enough water to cover, cover pan and simmer for 1/2 hour. Rub 1 tablespoon browned flour into 1 tablespoon butter until smooth, and stir into turtle mixture. When well blended together, add 1 well-beaten egg yolk and 4 tablespoons sherry. Let come just to boiling point and serve.
This is a period recipe for turtle stew, and the animals it names cannot simply be gathered today. The notes below explain what the ingredients were and why the dish belongs on the page rather than in the pan.
- The gopher is a protected tortoise"Gopher" here means the gopher tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus) of the southeastern sandhills, not a rodent. It is protected under state law across its range and federally listed as threatened in the western portion of that range; taking, killing or possessing one is an offence.
- Snapping turtles are regulated tooCommon snapping turtle harvest is closed or tightly licensed in many states, and take of alligator snapping turtles is prohibited in most states where they occur. There is no general right to take a wild turtle for the table.
- Wild turtle meat carries specific risksTurtles are a well-documented reservoir of Salmonella, and long-lived aquatic species accumulate mercury and organochlorine residues in fat and liver. The handling described — plunging, skinning, dicing on the same surfaces — offers no control over either.
- The finish is deliberately underheatedThe finish is a liaison -- The egg yolk and sherry are added at the end and the pan is brought "just to boiling point," the classic liaison technique: it is meant to thicken the sauce without curdling it.
- Mushroom catsupNot tomato ketchup. It was a thin, dark, salty mushroom-and-spice liquor, closer to Worcestershire or a modern mushroom soy, used through the nineteenth century as a general savoury seasoning.
- Kitchen BouquetA caramel-and-vegetable browning liquid, still sold. In this recipe it is doing colour work rather than flavour work, alongside the browned flour.
- Browned flourFlour toasted dry in a pan or slow oven until nut-coloured before being worked into butter. It colours a sauce but thickens noticeably less than raw flour.
- If you want the dishUse a current recipe built on a farmed or lawfully sold protein. Nothing in this entry should be treated as a source of method for wild turtle.
Turtle cookery was once ordinary American cooking rather than an exotic turn: green turtle soup was a banquet standard, and inland cooks made do with snappers, sliders and, in Florida and south Georgia, the gopher tortoise. The gopher was cheap country food, dug from its burrow and stewed or baked in the shell; it is often said to have been nicknamed "Hoover chicken" during the Depression, when it fed families who had little else. That abundance did not last — burrow habitat was cleared, collection went unregulated, and the tortoise is now a protected keystone species whose burrows shelter hundreds of other animals.