Obs. If there is more meat on the head than you wish to put in the soup, prepare it for a pie, and, with the addition of a calf’s foot boiled tender, it will make an excellent ragoût pie; season it with zest, and a little minced onion, put in half a tea-cupful of stock, cover it with puff paste, and bake it one hour: when the soup comes from table, if there is a deal of meat and no soup, put it into a pie-dish, season it a little, and add some little stock to it; then cover it with paste, bake it one hour, and you have a good mock turtle pie.
This soup was eaten by the committee of taste with unanimous applause, and they pronounced it a very satisfactory substitute[220-*] for “the far-fetch’d and dear-bought” turtle; which is entirely indebted for its title of “sovereign of savouriness,” to the rich soup with which it is surrounded.
Without its paraphernalia of subtle double relishes, a “starved turtle,” has not more intrinsic sapidity than a “fatted calf.” Friendly reader, it is really neither half so wholesome, nor half so toothsome. See Essence of Turtle, [No. 343*], and [Obs.] to [No. 493]. To warm this soup, see [No. 485].
To season it, to each gallon of soup put two table-spoonfuls of lemon-juice, see [No. 407*], same of mushroom catchup ([No. 439]), and one of essence of anchovy ([No. 433]), half a pint of wine (this should be Madeira, or, if you wish to darken the colour of your soup, claret), a tea-spoonful of curry powder ([No. 455]), or a quarter of a drachm of Cayenne, and the peel of a lemon pared as thin as possible; let it simmer five minutes more, take out the lemon-peel, and the soup is ready for the tureen.
While the soup is doing, prepare for each tureen a dozen and a half of mock turtle forcemeat balls (to make these, see [No. 375] or [No. 376], [No. 390] to [No. 396]); we prefer the stuffing ordered in [No. 61], and a dozen egg balls; and put them into the tureen. Brain balls, or cakes, are a very elegant addition, and are made by boiling the brains for ten minutes, then putting them in cold water, and cutting them into pieces about as big as a large nutmeg; take savoury, or lemon-thyme dried and finely-powdered, nutmeg grated, and pepper and salt, and pound them all together; beat up an egg, dip the brains in it, and then roll them in this mixture, and make as much of it as possible stick to them; dip them in the egg again, and then in finely-grated and sifted bread-crumbs; fry them in hot fat, and send them up as a side-dish.
A veal sweetbread, prepared as in [No. 89], not too much done or it will break, cut into pieces the same size as you cut the calf’s head, and put in the soup, just to get warm before it goes to table, is a superb “bonne bouche;” and pickled tongue, stewed till very tender, and cut into mouthfuls, is a favourite addition. We order the meat to be cut into mouthfuls, that it may be eaten with a spoon: the knife and fork have no business in a soup-plate.
*** Some of our culinary contemporaries order the haut goût of this (as above directed, sufficiently relishing) soup to be combustibled and bedevilled with a copious addition of anchovies, mushrooms, truffles, morelles, curry-powder, artichoke bottoms, salmon’s head and liver, or the soft part of oysters or lobsters, soles cut in mouthfuls, a bottle of Madeira, a pint of brandy, &c.; and to complete their surfeiting and burn-gullet olio, they put in such a tremendous quantity of Cayenne pepper, that only a fire-proof palate, lined with asbestos, or indurated by Indian diet, can endure it. See [note] under [No. 493].
N.B. In helping this soup, the distributer of it should serve out the meat, forcemeat, and gravy, in equal parts; however trifling or needless this remark may appear, the writer has often suffered from the want of such a hint being given to the soup-server, who has sometimes sent a plate of mere gravy without meat, at others, of meat without gravy, and sometimes scarcely any thing but forcemeat balls.
Obs. This is a delicious soup, within the reach of those who “eat to live;” but if it had been composed expressly for those who only “live to eat,” I do not know how it could have been made more agreeable: as it is, the lover of good eating will “wish his throat a mile long, and every inch of it palate.”
N.B. Cucumber in a side-plate is a laudable vegetable accompaniment.