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To Dress a Turtle

A historical recipe from La cuisine creole, by Lafcadio Hearn (1885).

A historical recipe

La cuisine creole: a collection of culinary recipes from leading chefs and noted Creole housewives, who have made New Orleans famous for its cuisine, by Lafcadio Hearn (1885). Project Gutenberg eBook #75027.

From an old book: a historical recipe, not current advice. Its methods, additives and storage may be unsafe by today's standards.

Also printed in: La cuisine creole (1885).

Source and licence

From La cuisine creole, by Lafcadio Hearn (1885). Digitised by Project Gutenberg, eBook #75027 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75027). Public domain in the USA; its status may differ elsewhere.

Read the original Public domain in the USA

What was changed: As printed, from the book's text; Project Gutenberg's header and licence removed. Ingredient lines were read out of the text by a program. A historical recipe, not current advice.

United States. Associated with United States by the book is about Louisiana Creole cookery (Cooking, Creole); the recipe itself names no place (confidence 0.4). "Associated with" means only that the evidence named here links this recipe to that place. A recipe isn't labelled as representing an entire country because a source associates it with one, and regional origins are kept where the source gives them.

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Ingredients

Method

  1. Cut off the head and let it bleed well.
  2. Separate the bottom shell from the top with care, for fear of breaking the gall bag.
  3. Throw the liver and eggs, if any, into a bowl of water.
  4. Slice off all the meat from the under-shell and put in water also;
  5. break the shell in pieces, wash carefully and place it in a pot;
  6. cover it with water, and add one pound of middling or flitch of bacon with four chopped onions.
  7. Set this on the fire to boil.
  8. (If preferred, open and clean the chitterlings or intestines also--some use them.) Let this boil gently for four hours;
  9. keep the liver to fry.
  10. While the under-shell is boiling, wash the top-shell neatly, cut all the meat out, cover it up and set it by.
  11. Parboil the fins, clean them perfectly;
  12. take off the black skin and throw them into water.
  13. Now cut the flesh removed from both shells into small pieces;
  14. cut the fins up;
  15. sprinkle with salt, cover and set them by.
  16. When the pot containing the shells, etc., has boiled four hours, take out the bacon, scrape the shell, clean and strain the liquor, pour back in the pot about one quart, and put the rest by for the soup (Turtle Soup No.
  17. 2).
  18. Pick out the nice pieces strained out, and put with the fins in the gravy.
  19. Add to the meat one bottle of wine, one gill mushroom catsup, one gill of lemon pickle, cloves, nutmeg, salt, pepper, and one pound fresh butter rolled in flour.
  20. Stew together;
  21. take out the herbs, thicken with flour and put in the shell to bake with a puff paste around it.
  22. Trim with eggs.