No. 350

Terrapin, Clear, Thick or White

Terrapene au Clair, Liee ou a Blanc

Prepare and cook the terrapin as told in No. 1082, observing all the instructions given for the preparation of these turtles.

For Clear Terrapin.—When the terrapins are cooked, select the largest ones, bone them entirely, and cut up the pieces found to be too large, and being more than one inch; it will require one pound and a half. Prepare a stock the same as for clear turtle (No. 353), thicken with arrowroot or else fecula, when the stock is ready and nicely seasoned, add the terrapin to it, boil it up for a few minutes and finish the soup with some brandy and Madeira wine. Serve separately the pulp of two lemons, two hard boiled, chopped up eggs, and some chopped parsley, the whole on one or several plates, together or each article separate.

For Thick Terrapin Soup.—Make it exactly the same as the clear terrapin, with the exception of using the same stock as for thick green turtle soup (No. 353).

For Terrapin Soup, White.—Prepare it as for the above, only thickening it with veloute (No. 415); diluting it with chicken broth (for lean use lean veloute and fish broth). Boil, skim, season properly, then add when ready to serve, some raw egg-yolks, cream and fine butter, the proportions being two raw egg-yolks, one gill of cream and two ounces of fine butter for each quart.

← No. 349 Spanish Oilla Soups & Broths No. 351 Dried Turtle, Thick and Clear →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer's three terrapin soups are a technical exercise in stock, thickening and finishing — but the central ingredient is no longer one a cook can lawfully or ethically obtain in most places.

The terrapin itselfThe turtle intended here is the diamondback terrapin, Malaclemys terrapin, whose Gilded Age popularity collapsed its populations. It is now protected or its commercial harvest prohibited across most of its Atlantic and Gulf range, and it is listed internationally as a species of conservation concern. There is effectively no commercial supply chain for it, and rules vary state by state.
Other turtle is not a workaroundSea turtles, called for in the green turtle recipe cross-referenced here (No. 353), are protected under the Endangered Species Act and CITES. Importing, buying or serving them is a federal offence. If you want a soup in this style, use a current recipe built on another meat.
Wild-caught freshwater turtleBeyond legality, wild turtles are long-lived and accumulate mercury, PCBs and other persistent contaminants in fat and liver — the very parts this preparation preserves. Snapping turtle in particular carries advisories in many states.
The raw finish in the white versionTwo raw yolks, a gill of cream and two ounces of butter per quart are added 'when ready to serve', after the soup has been boiled and skimmed — that is, with no further cooking. A gill is half a cup. A liaison finished this way is not a pasteurising step for the raw yolks.
What the recipe is actually teachingStripped of the turtle, the structure is worth reading: the same cooked meat carried three ways — cleared and bound with arrowroot or fecula, made with the thick green turtle stock, or enriched with veloute and a yolk-cream liaison. The lemon pulp, chopped hard egg and parsley are served apart, on one plate or several, as the recipe directs.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer wrote The Epicurean (1894) out of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and terrapin is one of the clearest markers of that restaurant's era. Diamondback terrapin had been humble food along the Chesapeake — commonly said to have been fed to enslaved labourers and apprentices before it became fashionable — and by the 1880s it was among the most expensive items on an American menu, sold by the dozen by size and shipped live to city kitchens. Maryland terrapin stewed with Madeira and cream became the emblematic dish of the period's clubs and banquet halls, and Ranhofer gives it three separate treatments in the soup chapter alongside green turtle. The appetite outran the animal: harvests crashed in the early twentieth century, terrapin farming was attempted and largely failed, and the dish disappeared from menus. The recipe survives now as a record of a taste that consumed its own ingredient.