A guide to modern cookery

by A. Escoffier

Saw the carapace into six or eight pieces, and the plastron into four.

Put these pieces with the flippers into boiling water or into steam, to [blanch]. Withdraw the flippers as soon as they are sufficiently stiff for their skin to be removed, and leave the pieces of carapace and plastron to [blanch] for five minutes, in order that they may admit of being scraped. Now cool the pieces of carapace and plastron and the flippers, and put them into a stewpan containing enough water to abundantly cover [221] ]them. Set to boil; garnish with vegetables, as in the case of an ordinary broth, and add a small quantity of turtle herbs.

Five or six hours should be allowed for the cooking of the carapace and the plastron, but the flippers, which are put to further uses in other culinary preparations, should be withdrawn at the end of five hours.

When the pieces are taken from the cooking-liquor, remove all the flesh from the bones, and cool the former; then trim it carefully, and cut it into little squares of one and one-half inches side. It is these squares together with the green fat (poached in salted water and sliced) which constitute the garnish of the soup.

The Preparation of Turtle Soup.—There are two modes of procedure, though their respective results are almost identical.

1. Make a broth of the flesh of turtle alone, and then add a very gelatinous beef consommé to it, in pursuance of the method employed when the turtle soup is bought ready-made.

This procedure is practically the best, more particularly if the soup has to be kept some time.

2. Make an ordinary broth of shin of beef, using the same quantity of the latter as of turtle. Also include half a calf’s foot and one-half lb. of calf’s shin per 3 lbs. of the beef. Add the flesh of the turtle, or, in the event of its being thought necessary to clarify, which operation I do not in the least advise, reserve it for that purpose.

The condiments and aromatics being the same for both methods, I shall now describe the procedure for method No. 1.

The Ingredients of the Soup.—Put into a stewpan of convenient size the flesh of the turtle and its head and bones. Moisten partly with the cooking-liquor of the carapace, and complete the moistening, in the case of a turtle weighing 120 lbs., with enough water to bring the whole to 50 quarts. By this means a soup of about thirty to thirty-five quarts will be obtained at the end of the operation. Add salt in the proportion of one oz. per every five quarts; set to boil; skim, and garnish with twelve carrots, a bunch of leeks (about ten bound with a head of celery), one lb. of parsley stalks, eight onions with ten cloves stuck into them, two lbs. of shallots, and one head of garlic. Set to boil gently for eight hours. An hour before straining the soup, add to the garnish four strips of lemon-peel, a bunch of herbs for turtle, comprising sweet basil, sweet marjoram, sage, rosemary, savory, and thyme, and a bag containing four oz. of coriander and two oz. of peppercorns.