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Preserved Green Turtle Soup
Choose a medium-sized turtle, cut off the head and allow it to bleed for twelve or fourteen hours. Remove the bones by opening the sides, cut the carcass into pieces, and blanch them for three minutes in boiling water. Lift off the top shell and place it in a saucepan, covering it with white broth, a handful of whole peppers, a dozen or so of cloves, half a bunch of thyme, and six bay leaves (all the above spices and herbs being tied up in a piece of cloth). Add a handful of salt, and cook for about an hour. Drain, remove the bones, and cut the flesh in dice. Allow the broth to be reduced to three-fourths its quantity, then put in the white lean meat, allowing it to cook for ten minutes, and then add the green part of the turtle. Fill some medium-sized vessels with this, and when cold pour hot lard over the tops. A wineglassful or so of Madeira wine may be added to the broth if desired.
This is a nineteenth-century method for potting turtle meat under a lard seal, and it fails on two counts today: the animal itself and the preservation method. The notes below explain the specifics rather than offering substitutions.
- The species is protectedThe green turtle (Chelonia mydas) is listed on CITES Appendix I and protected under national endangered-species law in the United States, the EU and most other jurisdictions. Taking, killing, importing or selling one is a criminal offence, and no commercial supply exists.
- Twelve to fourteen hours of bleedingThe carcass is held for over half a day before any cooking, with no temperature specified and no refrigeration implied. Reptile meat carries Salmonella at high rates, and an unrefrigerated hold of that length is squarely in the growth range. Nothing later in the method compensates for that head start.
- The lard seal is not preservationPouring hot fat over cooked meat excludes oxygen but does nothing about Clostridium botulinum, whose spores survive the hour of simmering and thrive in exactly those low-oxygen, low-acid conditions. Potted meats sealed under fat and held outside refrigeration are a documented botulism vehicle. There is no time, temperature or acidity given here that would make the pack safe.
- No processing step at allThe recipe specifies neither a jar sterilisation, a pressure-canning time, nor cold storage. "Medium-sized vessels" filled and left to cool is a room-temperature pack by default. Any modern preserving of low-acid meat requires a pressure canner at measured pressure and time.
- "White broth"For the record, this means bouillon blanc — an unbrowned veal or poultry stock, kept pale by blanching the bones and skimming rather than roasting them.
- If you want the dishMock turtle soup, built on a calf's head or veal, was a standard nineteenth-century substitute and appears in many books of the period. Use a current recipe with modern handling and storage.
Green turtle soup was the fixed emblem of expensive dining in the English-speaking world from the eighteenth century to the First World War: live turtles were shipped north from the Caribbean and Florida, kept in tanks in hotel cellars, and served at civic banquets and presidential inaugurations alike. Oscar Tschirky's Waldorf was working at the tail end of that trade, and this entry is a kitchen procedure rather than a dinner recipe — a way of banking the yield of a whole animal in sealed pots so that a portion of soup could be produced on demand. The scale of that demand is exactly what collapsed the populations; the green turtle is protected today in large part because of appetites like this one. Mock turtle soup, made from a calf's head to imitate the gelatinous texture of calipee, was already common in the same period and outlived the real thing.