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Forcemeat Balls for Turtle Soup
Cut off a very small portion of the vealy part of a turtle, mince it very fine and mix it up with a small quantity of boned anchovy and boiled celery, the yolks of one or two hard-boiled eggs and two tablespoonfuls of sifted breadcrumbs, with mace, cayenne pepper and salt to taste, a small quantity of warmed butter and well-beaten egg. Form the paste into balls, plunge them into a fryingpan of boiling butter or fat, fry them to a good color and they are then ready for use. They should be added hot to the soup.
The obstacle here is not technique but the main ingredient: the turtle this recipe assumes is a protected animal.
- The turtle itselfTurtle soup of this period normally meant green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas), which the trade generally received alive. That species is listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act and Appendix I of CITES; possessing, importing or serving it is illegal, and there is no lawful supply.
- "The vealy part"Trade language for the pale, fine-grained flesh that was likened to veal, as distinct from the gelatinous calipash (upper shell) and calipee (lower shell) that gave the soup its body. All of it comes from the same prohibited animal.
- Freshwater turtle is not a swapSnapping and soft-shell turtle are regulated state by state, many populations are in decline, and wild-caught freshwater turtles carry a well-documented Salmonella load. Substituting one for the other does not make this recipe usable.
- Nothing else in it is the problemThe anchovy, boiled celery, hard-boiled yolks, breadcrumbs, mace and cayenne are a conventional nineteenth-century forcemeat binding, and frying small balls in butter to color is ordinary practice. If you want turtle-style soup garnish, work from a current recipe built on veal or beef.
- Quantities are deliberately vagueQuantities are vague -- The recipe specifies only "a very small portion" of turtle and "a small quantity" of several other ingredients, and gives no yield.
Green turtle soup was the ceremonial soup of the nineteenth-century hotel and banquet trade, and the shell gelatin was prized for the body it gave the broth. Forcemeat balls were a standard garnish, and English cookery books of the period sometimes had small balls shaped to imitate turtle eggs. Their presence in a fashionable American hotel book reflects the London tavern tradition of the previous century, when turtle feasts were civic events. Demand of this kind was one of the pressures that led to the green turtle's later legal protection.