The Bizarre Mystery Of Mock Turtle Soup
An article looking at the once-popular turtle soup, and one of the first faux meats in modern history.
Does anyone remember the Mock Turtle from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland? Yeah, me too. I loved that weird-looking critter with its cool story and its neat teacher named “Tortoise.”
But, this isn’t about Alice or her adventures. The Mock Turtle wasn’t just a character from a silly kid’s book. It was an allusion to a very popular dish back in the day. Let’s talk about this once-popular recipe, shall we?
What Is Mock Turtle Soup?
During the Victorian Era, food was hard to come by. Many meats that are now considered to be taboo were commonplace. During the earlier half of the century, snapping turtle soup was one of the most popular dishes money could buy. If you were very rich, green turtle was the more common option.
By the 1850s, turtle soup became so popular, turtles themselves became rare. It became a rich person’s food — one that is still incredibly rare today, simply because hunting snapping turtles can result in people losing their limbs.
Today, many parts of the world still outlaw turtle soup because the hunting of turtles decimated populations worldwide. In fact, many parts of the world still struggle to get turtle populations up to once they were, simply due to the ramifications of overhunting.
Unfortunately, people still liked their darn turtle soup. And turtle was a surprisingly expensive meat. So, in what might be one of the most progressive things that Victorians did, they came up with a meat substitute.
Unlike the Mock Turtle in Alice’s story, mock turtle soup is not made from any single real animal.
“Mock” wasn’t a special type of turtle. Rather, “mock” used to mean fake — much like how “Impossible Turtle Soup” would be a menu item today. Unfortunately, it was rarely, if ever vegetarian. No one knows who made the first mock turtle soup, either.
There was no set-in-stone recipe for it, either. Rather, Victorians often used what they could get to get a flavor comparable to turtle there. Sometimes, it would be a mix of calfs’ tongue, ground beef, cow brain, slices of dark meat from birds, and even a little oyster.
From what most recipes showed, slices of calf’s head were one of the most common meats to use. More specifically, it seems like the flavor was similar to that of turtle, and calf’s tongue was not far behind when it came to texture.
If you want to give it a try, I’m going to warn you, people who have a delicate stomach might vomit. But, I found a good recipe that’s fairly historically accurate here.
What Does Turtle Soup Taste Like?
Honestly? It apparently tasted really good. It was even slang for “tasty food.” It was primarily a rich dish made with red or Madeira wine, slightly sweet with an almost tomato-y taste. Some also noted that it had a tart yet buttery taste.
Though turtle soup is rare and has to be prepared with commercially farmed turtles, you might still be able to find a couple of places that serve real turtle soup in certain states. In most places, it’s served up as a nice gumbo or spicy soup. Bon appetit!
