No. 355

Mock Turtle Soup, Thickened

Soupe Fausse tortue Liee

It needs one gallon of soup for twelve persons. Proceed exactly the same as for the clear mock turtle only leaving out the fecula thickening. Put four ounces of butter into a saucepan on a slow fire, and when melted, mix in with it a quarter of a pound of flour, cook it slowly to obtain a blond roux, which then moisten with clear turtle stock, until it becomes the consistency of a light sauce, cook it slowly and keep despumating it for half an hour, then strain it through a sieve or tammy, and return it to the fire in a very clean saucepan, and after bringing the liquid up to a boil, despumate it again. Add the quenelles, the calf's head cut in pieces, and the pulp of a lemon without any peel or pips, also half a gill of sherry wine for each quart of soup.

← No. 354 Mock Turtle or Calf's Head, Clear Soup Soups & Broths No. 356 Velvet Soup →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is the thickened version of Ranhofer's mock turtle, built on the clear soup of No. 354; it assumes you already have that stock, the cooked calf's head and the quenelles on hand. The hinge is the roux: it must be cooked to blond, not brown, and the soup skimmed repeatedly, or the finished bowl will taste of raw flour and look muddy.

YieldOne gallon serves twelve as written, which is a generous first course of about 10-11 oz each. The proportions scale down cleanly; a quart-and-a-half batch takes 1 1/2 oz butter and 1 1/2 oz flour.
DespumateAn old kitchen verb meaning to skim off the scum and fat that rise as the liquid simmers. Keep the pot at a bare tremble on one side of the burner so the impurities collect on the cool side, and lift them with a ladle every few minutes for the full half hour.
Blond rouxButter and flour cooked slowly until the mixture smells of toasted nuts and turns the colour of pale straw, roughly 6-8 minutes over low heat. Stop before it takes on any real colour, as a brown roux thickens less and would darken a soup meant to stay amber.
FeculaFecula is potato or arrowroot starch, used in the clear version as a light finishing thickener. Here it is deliberately omitted, because the roux does the whole job.
A gillA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 1/4 cup (2 fl oz) of sherry per quart. For a full gallon that is a cup of sherry, added off the boil so the alcohol does not cook out entirely.
Calf's headNot a supermarket item today, though Latin American, Halal and old-style butchers will order one, usually split and often already scalded. Ask for it boned if you do not want to deal with the skull. Enough of the gelatinous cheek and tongue meat to fill about 3 cups, cut in 1/2-inch dice, suits a gallon of soup.
QuenellesSmall poached forcemeat dumplings, in Ranhofer's kitchen usually veal or chicken bound with panada and egg. Poach them separately in stock and add at the end; simmering them in the finished soup clouds it.
Lemon pulpSegment the lemon, strip every scrap of membrane, peel and seed, and break the flesh into the pot. Peel and pips can turn a soup bitter over a long hold on the stove, which may be why he specifies their removal, though he does not say.
Consistency"A light sauce" means it coats a spoon thinly and runs off freely; this is a soup, not a veloute. Moisten the roux gradually and stop while it still looks slightly thin, since half an hour of reduction will tighten it.

A Little History

Mock turtle soup was invented to imitate the green turtle soup that was a luxury of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English and American dining, and the substitute of choice was a calf's head, whose skin and cheek meat turn gelatinous and faintly gluey in exactly the way turtle does. By the time Charles Ranhofer set down The Epicurean in 1894, after decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, mock turtle was standard enough that he gave it in two forms: a clear version thickened lightly with starch, and this liaison version built on a roux. The pairing of the two entries shows how a grand restaurant kitchen worked from a single day's stockpot, dressing one preparation up or down according to the menu. Sherry in turtle and mock turtle soup was practically obligatory in the period, and survived into the twentieth-century canned versions long after real turtle, and calves' heads, had left most American tables.