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Terrapin Soup
Put the shells, heads and trimmings of three terrapins into a saucepan with plenty of water and boil them gently for two or three hours, skimming it well the first time it bubbles. When all the good has been extracted from the shells, etc., strain the liquor into a clean saucepan, put in the pieces of terrapin meat and boil them for an hour; the fat should be added after the meat has boiled for a short time. At the end of an hour take out the pieces of terrapin and put them on a dish to cool, strain their liquor into a bowl; put the bones that have been separated from the meat into two quarts of water until all the gelatine has dissolved, then add the strained liquor, a bunch of thyme and parsley, one teaspoonful of bruised peppercorns, two cloves, one teaspoonful of chopped onion and half a blade of mace, and let it boil for about thirty minutes longer. Cut the cold meat of the terrapin into small square pieces, strain the soup into a clean saucepan, put in the meat and boil it up. Boil up one quart of cream in another saucepan, put one tablespoonful of flour, a lump of butter the size of a hen's egg into a saucepan, stir it over the fire until mixed, then pour in the boiling cream; strain this through a strainer into the soup. The soup should be served as soon as the cream is mixed with it.
This is a period restaurant recipe built on an animal that can no longer be bought, and in most places can no longer legally be taken. The notes below explain why the page is worth reading rather than cooking.
- The animal itself"Terrapin" here means the diamondback terrapin, Malaclemys terrapin, of the Atlantic and Gulf salt marshes. Commercial harvest is now prohibited or tightly restricted across its range, and the species is listed as of conservation concern; there is no legal supply chain to a home kitchen.
- Three terrapins is a large quantityThe recipe assumes a professional kitchen butchering three animals, using shells, heads, trimmings, bones and the fat (the recipe does not specify which fat). Nothing about that process translates to a domestic cook, and no part of it should be attempted with a wild-caught turtle.
- Turtles and SalmonellaReptiles are common carriers of Salmonella, which is why the sale of small pet turtles has long been restricted in the United States. Butchering a turtle spreads that risk across a work surface, and the recipe's long handling of cooled meat and strained liquors offers plenty of opportunity for it.
- If you want turtle soupFarmed snapping turtle and canned turtle meat are sold in some markets, but they do not behave like terrapin and this recipe gives no guidance for them. Use a current, tested recipe from a supplier or a modern cookbook instead.
- Reading the measurementsA "blade of mace" is a single piece of the lacy husk around a nutmeg, roughly a quarter to half a teaspoon ground depending on the piece. "Butter the size of a hen's egg" is about two ounces, four tablespoons.
- What the finished soup wasFor all the labor, the result is a gelatinous stock enriched at the last moment with a quart of cream thickened by a very light roux. The insistence on serving "as soon as the cream is mixed" is the one piece of real technique here, though the recipe does not say why.
Terrapin was a celebrated American luxury food of the nineteenth century, served in expensive New York dining rooms alongside canvasback duck, with Baltimore-style terrapin the best-known preparation; the attribution of this particular page to Oscar Tschirky's Waldorf is not supported by the recipe itself. Terrapin had earlier been common, cheap marsh protein around the Chesapeake, and the tradition that it was a staple for watermen and for enslaved and free Black cooks along the tidewater is widely repeated, though the often-quoted details are thinly documented. The taste for it moved up the social scale in the mid-1800s and prices rose steeply, with top-grade Chesapeake terrapin fetching very high prices by the 1890s. Heavy demand contributed to the collapse of the wild population, and terrapin dishes faded from menus in the early twentieth century as supply failed; Prohibition, which removed the sherry and madeira that finished many terrapin dishes, is usually cited as a further blow. The recipe survives mainly as evidence of what Gilded Age dining considered worth the trouble, and of how quickly a wild species can be eaten out of the market.