No. 1091

Turtle, Havana Style

Tortue a la Havanaise

Lard the fins of a turtle with calf's udder, braise them in a mirepoix stock (No. 419), moistened with Madeira, and when the turtle is cooked, take out the stock and put it into a flat saucepan with an equal quantity of espagnole sauce (No. 414); reduce and despumate; add some finely shreded green peppers, peeled and quartered tomatoes, Spanish olives stuffed with anchovies and fish quenelles (No. 90); glaze the turtle with meat glaze (No. 402), dress with the garnishing around, and serve.

← No. 1090b Terrapin, Epicurean Style Green Turtle No. 1092 Green Turtle Baked-Small →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This dish cannot be cooked today, and the reason is the main ingredient rather than the method. The notes below explain what the instructions call for and why the recipe is now closed to us.

Green turtle is protectedChelonia mydas is listed as threatened or endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act and on Appendix I of CITES, which bars international commercial trade. Buying, possessing or serving its meat, fins or eggs is a criminal offence in the United States and in most of the world.
There is no legal supply chainThere is effectively no legal supply chain -- the live turtles and canned turtle meat that supplied nineteenth-century hotel kitchens are no longer a lawful commodity in the United States or most other markets. Material offered as "turtle" is generally another species, a mislabelled substitute, or illegally taken product.
Calf's udder is also goneCalf's udder is also effectively gone -- the larding material specified here was a familiar nineteenth-century French kitchen fat. It has long since ceased to be a retail cut in the English-speaking world and is very hard to source today.
What the cross-references areMirepoix stock (No. 419) is a wine-and-vegetable braising liquor; espagnole (No. 414) is the brown mother sauce; meat glaze (No. 402) is stock reduced to a syrup; No. 90 is the fish quenelle forcemeat the recipe calls for. All four are preparations Ranhofer expected a hotel kitchen to have on hand.
DespumateAn old kitchen verb meaning to skim the scum and fat from the surface of a reducing sauce, repeatedly, until it runs clear and glossy.
The Havana in the nameThe garnish — green peppers, tomatoes, Spanish olives stuffed with anchovy — is the whole of the Cuban reference. That element of the dish is not restricted in any way; the turtle is.
If you want to cook from this pageUse a current recipe for a braise of another meat. We are not supplying a substitution scheme for this one.

A Little History

Green turtle was a luxury protein of the nineteenth-century Atlantic city, shipped live from the Caribbean and Florida to eastern seaboard ports including Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, held in tanks at hotels and sold as soup, stew, steaks and fins. Ranhofer, who worked at Delmonico's from 1862, gives a run of green turtle recipes in The Epicurean (1894), which indicates how ordinary it was on a fashionable carte. The "Havana style" name is usually taken to point at the Spanish-Caribbean garnish -- green peppers, tomatoes and anchovy-stuffed Spanish olives -- rather than at any documented Cuban original; Havana was also a shipping point for turtle heading north, though the recipe itself says nothing of this. Atlantic and Caribbean nesting populations declined heavily under harvesting of this kind for meat and eggs, and legal protection followed in the later twentieth century -- which is why a recipe printed as routine hotel work is now a historical document rather than a set of instructions.