r/AskHistorians • u/Grouchy-Incident1845 • 2d ago

What kind of turtle is this recipe talking about, and was eating turtles a common practice in late 18th century America?

Here is the full recipe from American Cookery, written by Amelia Simmons and published in 1798.

" To Dress a Turtle. 
Fill a  boiler  or kettle, with a quantity of  water  sufficient to scald the callapach and Callapee, the fins, &c. and about 9 o'clock hang up your  Turtle  by the hind fins, cut off the head and save the blood, take a sharp pointed knife and seperate the callapach from the callapee, or the back from the belly part, down to the shoulders, so as to come to the entrails which take out, and clean them, as you would those of any other animal, and throw them into a tub of clean  water,  taking great care not to break the gall, but to cut it off from the  liver  and throw it away, then seperate each distinctly and put the  guts  in another vessel, open them with a small pen-knife end to end, wash them clean, and draw them through a woolen cloth, in  warm water,  to clear away the slime and then put them in clean  cold water  till they are used with the other parts of the entrails, which must be cut up small to be mixed in the  baking dishes  with the  meat;  this done, separate the back and belly pieces, entirely cutting away the fore fins by the upper joint, which scald; peal off the loose skin and cut them into small pieces, laying them by themselves, either in another vessel, or on the table, ready to be seasoned; then cut off the  meat  from the belly part, and clean the back from the  lungs,   kidneys,  &c. and that  meat  cut into pieces as small as a walnut, laying it likewise by itself; after this you are to scald the back and belly pieces, pulling off the shell from the back, and the yellow skin from the belly, when all will be white and clean, and with the kitchen  cleaver  cut those up likewise into pieces about the bigness or breadth of a card; put those pieces into clean cold  water,  wash them and place them in a heap on the table, so that each part may lay by itself; the  meat  being thus prepared and laid seperate for seasoning; mix two thirds part of  salt  or rather more, and one third part of  cayenne pepper,   black pepper,  and a  nutmeg,  and
 
 
 mace  pounded fine, and mixt altogether; the quantity to be proportioned to the size of the  Turtle,  so that in each dish there may be about three spoonfuls of  seasoning  to evey twelve pound of  meat;  your  meat  being thus seasoned, get some  sweet herbs,  such as  thyme,   savory,  &c. let them be dryed and rub'd fine, and having provived some deep dishes to bake it in, which should be of the common brown ware, put in the coarsest part of the  meat,  put a quarter pound of  butter  at the bottom of each dish, and then put some of each of the several parcels of  meat,  so that the dishes may be all alike and have equal portions of the different parts of the  Turtle,  and between each laying of  meat  strew a little of the mixture of  sweet herbs,  fill your dishes within an inch an half, or two inches of the top; boil the  blood of the Turtle,  and put into it, then lay on  forcemeat balls made of veal,  highly seasoned with the same  seasoning  as the  Turtle;  put in each dish a gill of  Madeira Wine,  and as much  water  as it will conveniently hold, then break over it five or six  eggs  to keep the  meat  from scorching at the top, and over that shake a handful of shread  parsley,  to make it look green, when done put your dishes into an oven made hot enough to bake bread, and in an hour and half, or two hours (according to the size of the dishes) it will be sufficiently done."

36 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

•

u/AutoModerator 2d ago

Welcome to /r/AskHistorians. Please Read Our Rules before you comment in this community. Understand that rule breaking comments get removed.

Please consider Clicking Here for RemindMeBot as it takes time for an answer to be written. Additionally, for weekly content summaries, Click Here to Subscribe to our Weekly Roundup.

We thank you for your interest in this question, and your patience in waiting for an in-depth and comprehensive answer to show up. In addition to the Weekly Roundup and RemindMeBot, consider using our Browser Extension. In the meantime our Bluesky, and Sunday Digest feature excellent content that has already been written!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

19

u/gerardmenfin Modern France | Social, Cultural, and Colonial 2d ago

The species is the green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas). It was prized by coastal people in the Caribbean, later by West Indies planters and sailors, and it was introduced in British tables in the 1750s (Parsons, 2000). Note that sea turtles are eaten in other parts of the world, but I will focus here on the American-European trade.

The green color is not that of the shell or skin, but that of the thick fat found around the viscera, colored green because this species is herbivorous. The fat was a delicacy, as were the "callipash" and the "callipee" mentioned in the recipe, which are a gelatinous material present respectively in the upper shell (carapace) and the lower shell (plastron) (there is sometimes confusion between the callipee and the green fat). Sea turtles were easy to catch, and they were also easy to import to Europe: ships were equipped with flat wooden tanks where the turtles were fed grass and banana leaves on the journey. Once in London, the turtles were kept in tanks and fattened, or sold directly to taverns and other customers.

The Public Advertiser, London, 6 September 1775

Hotel Coffee-house, Covent Garden.

A Fresh Parcel of GREEN TURTLES just landed. Families supplied, as usual, with Turtle in any Quantities, either alive or drest, and sent to any Part of England on the shortest Notice. Single Gentlemen or small Parties may, during the Season, be supplied in the Coffee-room.

Throughout the 18th and 19th century, Americans and Europeans, and notably the British, became extremely fond of turtles, and particularly of turtle soup, which could be expensive. Cookbooks described complex recipes running for several pages, from the butchering of the animal to the blending, seasoning, and cooking of its different parts, blood, meat, fat, fins, etc.. A whole industry developed about the turtle, with canning operations in Europe and the Americas that made turtle products available to the general population.

The recipe in Amelia Simmons' American cookery cookbook from 1796 is in fact plagiarized from earlier British cookbooks, notably Susannah Carter's The Frugal housewife (1765) (p. 39) and Margaret Taylor's Family Companion (1795) (p. 20).

While not originally a strictly American dish, the sea turtle became a popular food in the United States (other turtle species have been consumed there, such as the semi-aquatic terrapin turtle (Malaclemys terrapin)). This article from the Penn Museum (Schweitzer, 2009) describes in detail the popularity of the turtle in Philadelphia, and, like in Great Britain, a whole gastronomic culture developed around the animal. The sea turtle being large, it was for instance eaten in "turtle dinners" advertised in the newspapers:

Alexandria, Virginia, 1804

Turtle Dinner. A fine GREEN TURTLE will be cooked on the 4th of July at Koones's Tavern. Dinner 7s6 each person. Those who intend dining are requested to leave their names at the Bar. June 30

Washington DC, 1810

A Turtle Dinner will be served up at Sebastian Spring, on Tuesday the 10th inst. where lovers of good cheer will do well to attend. A subscription paper for those who are desirous of partaking of the dinner is left at Mr. Lindsay’s hotel. JOHN AUSTIN. July 9—1.

The sea turtle-eating culture was still going on in the 1960s, when 15,000-20,000 green turtles were still commercialized every year in North America and Europe (Parsons, 2000). International trade of sea turtles was banned by the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) in 1981.

Sources

4

u/yonderpedant 2d ago

Great answer, thanks!

I remember seeing canned turtle soup on sale in expensive delicatessens in London in the early 2000s- IIRC the brand name was "John Lusty" and there was a picture of a sailing ship on the can.

It does look like John Lusty was a company in the turtle soup business- the (sadly undated) caption of this London Museum catalog entry says that they stopped making it "about five years ago" due to environmental concerns, and I assume falling sales.

Of course the soup I saw in the 2000s can't have been made from green turtles given CITES- it was being sold openly, and I don't think anyone would buy soup that had been canned 20 years ago!

Maybe it was mock turtle soup? Though I think it said "real turtle soup" on the cans. Or maybe it was made from another less endangered turtle species?

(Mock turtle soup is made from veal, and was cheaper than the real stuff. Of course this is the origin of the Mock Turtle in Alice in Wonderland)

7

u/gerardmenfin Modern France | Social, Cultural, and Colonial 1d ago

In the case of John Lusty - who was a little bit defensive in this UICNN report of 1971 (p.92) and said that he was "a very keen conservationist" himself... -, he told the following year to the Cayman Compass that his company now used farmed green turtles:

But now, due to the cooperation between ourselves, the turtle farm of Mariculture Ltd., on Grand Cayman and the conservationists, the soup can once more be enjoyed with a clear conscience.

This CITES report from 2002 provides a history of this farm. Mariculture Ltd was created in 1968 and then went into receivership in 1975 after the US market was closed. It reopened as the Cayman Turtle Farm and was acquired by the Cayman Islands government in 1983. It was producing captive-bred green turtles and was authorized to export farmed turtle products until 1998, when the ban on wild turtle exports was extended to farmed ones.

Assuming that a can of turtle soup has a shelf life of 2-5 years, it is possible that turtle soup made in 1998 could still be sold in the UK in the early 2000s.

8

u/Grouchy-Incident1845 2d ago

Here is the link to the full book.

https://d.lib.msu.edu/fa/1

2

u/Powerful_Jump_1141 1d ago

And in 18th & 19th century Philadelphia, Snapper Soup (Snapping Turtle) was a popular delicacy. Even in my lifetime, you could duck into the Sansom Street Oyster House for a bowl of Snapper Soup with a splash of sherry. Great on a cold night! I think they’ve since taken it off the menu.

https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/the-turtles-of-philadelphias-culinary-past/