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How to Prepare a Green Turtle
Procure a small live green turtle of about twenty-five pounds. Hang it up with the head downward, then with a sharp knife cut off the head and let bleed for twelve hours. Separate the upper from the lower shell with the knife, being careful to avoid cutting the gall bladder. Remove the intestines, cut the flesh away from the shells, as well as bones, etc. Cut each shell into four equal pieces, plunge in boiling water and blanch for three minutes. Lift them up, drain well, then with a small knife detach all the horny skin around the shells.
Place in a large saucepan five pounds bones or parings of veal, also about two pounds lean parings of beef, as well as a few beef bones. Pour in seven gallons cold water. Season with six tablespoons salt and one tablespoon white pepper and let come to a boil. Carefully remove the scum from the surface. Add six small peeled carrots, six medium, white onions, four leeks, two branches celery, one bunch parsley. Tie in a cloth four sprigs bay leaf, a teaspoon thyme, half teaspoon sage, two tablespoons whole black peppers, a tablespoon allspice, six cloves, two blades mace and add to the broth; then slowly boil for six hours. Strain the broth through a sieve into another large saucepan on the range; add one gallon cold water and all the shells and fins and briskly boil for twenty-five minutes. Remove the fins and keep them on a dish and slowly cook the shells, etc., for forty-five minutes. Remove the shells and place them with the fins.
Strain the broth through a cheesecloth into another saucepan and keep on the range. Remove all the meat from the shells and fins and cut the green part of the meat into half-inch-square pieces and keep on a plate. Reduce the broth to one gallon and a half, then add the meat pieces and boil for five minutes. Transfer it into a stone jar, let thoroughly cool off and place the jar in the ice box till the next day.
Lightly melt in a frying pan four ounces leaf lard and carefully spread it over the surface of the broth to prevent souring, and always keep in a cool place.
The lean part of the turtle can be cut into thin slices quarter of an inch thick; then breaded and fried in butter for six minutes and served as steaks with tomato sauce, or finely minced and prepared Creole style.
This is a genuine turtle-house procedure from the era when green turtle was a luxury staple of hotel kitchens. It cannot be followed now, for reasons of law as much as food safety.
- The species is protectedThe green turtle, Chelonia mydas, is listed on Appendix I of CITES and is protected under the US Endangered Species Act and comparable law in most countries. Taking, buying, selling or possessing one, live or butchered, is a criminal offence; the trade this recipe assumes no longer legally exists.
- Twelve hours of bleedingThe carcass is hung and bled for half a day at whatever temperature the kitchen happens to be. That is twelve hours in the range where Salmonella and other enterics multiply freely, and reptiles are well documented carriers of salmonellae in gut and on skin alike.
- The gall bladder warningThe instruction to avoid cutting the gall bladder is not squeamishness: spilled bile taints the flesh it touches and turns it bitter, and kitchen manuals of the period repeat the caution.
- Lard as a sealCooling a gallon and a half of meat broth in a stone jar and pouring melted leaf lard over the top is a pre-refrigeration preservation method. A fat cap excludes air but does nothing against anaerobes, and this is exactly the low-acid, sealed, uncontrolled-temperature condition in which Clostridium botulinum becomes a hazard.
- ScaleSeven gallons of water, five pounds of veal bones and a twenty-five pound turtle are hotel quantities. Nothing here is domestic; the yield is a gallon and a half of turtle broth, held in a jar for later use.
- If you want the dishMock turtle soup, built on a calf's head or on beef, was developed in the eighteenth century precisely as a substitute and is what any current recipe will give you. Use one of those.
Green turtle soup was the defining luxury of Anglo-American public dining from the mid-eighteenth century until well into the twentieth, and its price kept pace with its prestige: turtles were shipped live from the Caribbean, kept in tanks or damp cellars, and killed to order, which is why a book like this treats butchery as part of the recipe rather than something a supplier does. Large hotels and the great civic banquets of London and New York maintained dedicated turtle cooks, and the aldermanic turtle feast became a stock subject for satirists. The taste for it is often said to have been one pressure among several driving the animal toward collapse, alongside egg harvesting and habitat loss; the same appetite produced mock turtle soup, made from a calf's head simmered until the gelatinous skin approximated the turtle's green fat, and Lewis Carroll's Mock Turtle depends on readers knowing the joke. Protection of sea turtles came decades later.