Turtle Soup

Ingredients

• medium-sized turtles of about 120 lb.
• 3 lb. of raw ham
• 40 lb. of leg of beef
• knuckle of veal
• the carcases of four old hens
• 35 pints of standard broth
• 1 lb. of Proust’s extract
• 20 quarts of hot water
• boiling in this the butter, sliced ham, and fleshy parts of the turtle for one hour

Method

1. 1

   Prepare the turtle by killing and dissecting it.

2. 2

   Boil the stripped bones to extract flavor.

3. 3

   Combine the turtle meat with raw ham, leg of beef, knuckle of veal, and carcasses of old hens in a pot.

4. 4

   Add water and boil to create a broth.

5. 5

   Optionally, use Proust’s extract for a quicker preparation.

6. 6

   Thicken half of the soup with a roux and clarify the other half with albumin.

7. 7

   Season with cayenne and lemon juice, and add turtle fat and quenelles before serving.

As published

This recipe was extracted from The spirit of cookery (1895) by Johann Ludwig Wilhelm Thudichum, page 130. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

Turtle Soup, Soupe d la Tortue d I’Anglaise, is a clear or thick gravy soup, containing the gelatinous flaps of the skin and some of the green fat of the turtle, and adventitious quenelles. Turtles of all sizes yield good skin flaps, but TURTLE SOUP 195 only medium-sized turtles of about 120 lb. in weight yield delicate fat ; the smaller ones are often without any fat at all, and in the larger ones the fat is liable to be of bad taste. The killing and dissecting for the kitchen of a turtle is a complicated process, the description of which may be left to technical books. The skin at the junction of the head and extremities with the body is easily isolated ; that under- lying the scales of the lower or breast plate, plastron, and the convex back shell, carapace, can only be obtained by boiling the shields, cut into small pieces by a bone-saw. Most recipes advise that the cook should return the stripped bones to the water in which they were boiled for the purpose of, by further boiling, extracting all their sup- posed savour. This shows how errors, once started, become generalised and made permanent. The boiling of these bones is perfectly useless, as they, like their relations in beef, do not contribute any useful ingredient to the decoc- tion, and may, like that decoction itself, be excluded from further participation in the process. The preparation of hcrtle stock does not differ from that of any of the best soups described above ; but its flavour is specialized by the addition of puree of turtle soup herbs, which consists of sweet basil, winter savory, marjoram, and lemon thyme, besides the usual vegetable symphony. Some recipes add wine, such as old madeira, to the soup, which others think unnecessary, or even prejudicial. The fat is boiled in soup sauce, changing its colour from bluish to green. The quenelles are to be shaped like small turtle’s eggs, and to be poached in broth. The traditional recipes for the turtle soup broth do not state the actual quantity of soup to be obtained from the accurately described materials. We can, however, construct from the material its possible maximum strength if it is to remain a savoury soup according to our standard. We 196 THE SPIRIT OF COOKERY assume that soup from the proceeds of a turtle of 120 lb. to 150 lb. has to be made. Taking 3 11). of raw ham, 40 lb. of leg of beef and knuckle of veal, and the carcases of four old hens (as equal to 2 lb. of flesh), we obtain 35 lb. of pure flesh. If this were fully extracted, it would be equal to a little more than a pound of Proust’s extract, and this would yield 35 pints of standard broth of such a quality as the process actually adopted could never yield. But allowing that the greater part of the extractives had actually been obtained in solution, they would, with the herbs, roots, etc., be sufiicient to yield 40 pints, or 5 gallons, of soup, enough for more than forty persons. This would be soup better than any that is ordinarily obtained, and it might be diluted, probably, so as to satisfy a hundred persons. If, instead of making the broth from the shins and knuckles and old hens just described, it be made by dis- solving 1 lb. of Proust’s extract in 20 quarts of hot water, and boiling in this the butter, sliced ham, and fleshy parts of the turtle, the head a

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.