February 9, 2021 • 37 mins
Today it's uncommon to see turtle soup on most restaurant menus-- but, not too long ago, this was considered a top-notch delicacy, praised for its flavor, enjoyed by world leaders, and widely praised for its deep, unique flavor. In the first part of this series, the guys explore the heyday of turtle soup... and how it eventually led to the rise of mock turtle soup.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much
for tuning in. Today's a day where we talk not turkey,
but turtles. Uh. My name is Ben. There's this this
handsome guy who does this show with me. His name
is Noel Brown. And he was, uh, we were hanging
(00:48):
out off air earlier and he was a little bit, uh,
a little bit mad about his headphones. Today it was
a little bit miffed about my cam situation. Yeah, as
what we call it in the biz. Hands Um. Yeah. Yeah.
One thing, this is a word to the wise. Don't
ever have children, because they will take your stuff with
impunity and never return it. The look is its own story.
(01:14):
But yeah, I'm basically wearing the type of like little
crappy plastic headphones that would have come with like a
Sony discman, you know in the nineties. I feel like
I should be listening to like, you know, throwing copper
By Live right now in my in my ears, um,
but instead we're talking about turtles. Turtle power, soup power,
Turtle soup power. Remember the amazing pizza ad campaign of
(01:38):
the nineteen nineties where like the teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
were in a glam rock band and there was a
whole soundtrack that they made with songs about pizza and
being turtles. Am I the only one that is this
like a Mandela Effects situation. I actually don't remember this.
That's our super producer, Casey Pegram. I just remember they
had a song. It was like this anthemic song. It
(01:59):
was like where the tur Turtles? You can count on
us Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was sort of on the
like cusp of the eighties and like the Rising Tide
of the nineties, but it's still was very like hair metal. Uh,
look it up. There must be videos around. I would
say it's on the cusp of K pop as far
(02:22):
as the zeit guys, you know, the Turtles could have
been bts. Uh they're on the way. They were missing
maybe three members. Uh, you're giving yourself hard time. No,
you're saying these are not your cans, but your mock cans.
Uh right, Well, I mean they technically are. Can't there's
(02:43):
just substandard. But I love the word mock by the way,
I think it's it's got a nice ring to it,
and of course it means false counterfeit some sort of
stand in, but it doesn't necessarily imply poor quality. Wonderful point. Yeah,
today's episode is about a thing that may be weird
(03:05):
to a lot of people. Here we're talking about it
off air before we started rolling today. It's about turtle
soup and mock turtle suit. We've talked in the past
about the wildest things we have eaten, by which I
mean the most scrumptious things in violation of the soft
cultural taboos in the West. You know, you can eat
(03:29):
a pig, you cannot eat a cat. Right, you can
eat cow, you cannot eat a dog, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Turtles are different, right, for a long long time, people
eight a lot of turtles. If you go back through
the menus of yesteryear in the United States, you will
(03:54):
see turtle soup offered as sort of a flex. You know.
It's like, now we're in a fancy place if we
see turtle soup on the menu, specifically sup It's strange,
isn't it that it no longer exists today? Like like
(04:14):
if you go to the fanciest restaurant in Atlanta, which
is universally acknowledged, check me on this guy's as a
restaurant named Bacchanalia. If you, guys are familiar good things,
never never had the had the pleasure. It's uh. It's
a nice place, it's a hefty place for your wallet.
(04:35):
But if you go even there, you will not see
turtle soup on the menu. So what happened? How did
this like, how did this become a phenomenon in the
world of cuisine? How did it become so popular? And
then why is it not as popular now? Yeah, I
actually just did a quick quick google wise turtle soup
(04:57):
not eating anymore? And you know the number one reason
is uh, probably the obvious one. Many species of turtles
are endangered. Um. And it turns out that the species
of turtles that were most popular were ones that today
would be considered uh on the endangered list, like the
Chelonia midas or the green sea turtle of the Caribbean,
(05:17):
which could weigh up to a hundred pounds. In England
in particular, in the mid seventeen hundreds, you would see
this dish on tavern menus. But it would have been,
like you said, men a bit of a flex. It
would have been up there with some of the most
expensive and kind of rarefied items even at you know,
a local tavern or a pub um because they had
(05:38):
to be freshly caught. Right. There was no shipping frozen
turtles all the way from the Caribbean to London because
at the time, of course, refrigeration was not it's a thing,
at least to the degree that it is now. Certainly
they could keep things on ice, but these turtles had
to be shipped alive and and kept in these special tanks. Uh.
(06:00):
Kind of like lobsters at the grocery store, only much
larger because again these were hundred pound creatures. Um. And
the soup itself was also made with some pretty fancy
ingredients like Madeira wine. That was kind of a simmered
broth where that was the base and then it was
seasoned with cayenne peppers and anchovies. So the whole thing
could often take like half a day to make, almost
(06:22):
like the way uh really fine raman broth takes a
really long time to make that like bone broth, you know,
you see the the experts or for fun, it really
does take a lot to make that broth. Um. Thankfully,
fu and ramen are are still relatively affordable. Oh yes, yes,
you make an excellent point here in u there was
(06:45):
no refrigeration. This was like ordering crab legs at a
restaurant in terms of dollar value. Right, this is the
most expensive thing on the menu. You take out your
deity one to impress them. You say, order whatever you want,
and then your date looks askance and you say, yes,
(07:08):
even the turtle soup for you, my darling, anything You
really loved me enough to let me eat this weird,
scaly broth based dish, right right, that's that's one of
the questions. Will explore why soup? Why? Why is it
soup rather than turtle freakacy? You know what I mean?
(07:31):
Fileto turtle? Right there we go. Yes, so we have
to wonder how did these turtles come to be shipped
to England in the first place. As written in Culinary Lore,
one of the explanations is that turtles provided protein during
(07:52):
sea voyages. Right. It's it's very easy to find, or
it was back in the day. Very easy need to find,
catch and eat them. And as any kid who has
ever had a box turtle as a pet knows, turtles
are very easy to capture and keep alive, so they're
(08:13):
not like fish. You don't have to have an aquarium,
just have a little standing water and your turtle friend
can splash around and live their turtle life around the
sailors who will later consume it. So they carried it
all the way back to Europe, and then people were
like royalty aristocrats and so on, said, what's the most
(08:36):
impressive thing you found in your travels and your adventures
to the west. And they would say, well, we found
this weird thing. It's like a snake, but it's got
a it's got the shell. Uh, here you go. And
I said, what do you do with them? And they said,
we eat them. Yeah, crack them open and and and
(08:57):
eat them up, because again, remember these are very large uh.
And obviously, you know, sea voyages were very long and arduous,
and um was hard to keep fresh meat and fresh
supplies on the ship. Typically it was like salted meats
or dried you know, fruits and things like that that
could be preserved and you know, not spoiled during the
long uh trips to see but they could kind of
(09:20):
keep this as fresh meat on hand. Um, and it
was probably one of the tastier options. You hear stories
of like uh, seafaring folk Uh, you know, sailors and whatnot,
like catching like albatrosses and seabirds and things like that,
and they're apparently just really gamy and disgusting and not
pleasant at all. And you know, I have not had
(09:41):
turtle soup personally, but for some reason, I'm picturing it
maybe tasting a little bit like alligator meat, only because
of the consistency of their scales and their skin and whatnot. Um,
so I would argue that the turtle was the original
chicken of the sea. There we go. I think I
think you earned that one. The thing is, you know,
(10:06):
the albatross is a terrible bird to kill. In the
world of sailor and maritime superstitions. We should absolutely do
an episode on maritime superstitions because it's good. It's gonna
be a two parter, it has to be. Uh, turtles
can be kept alive. They don't really have the means
(10:29):
to wander off once you get them on the ship. Right.
You may wonder, folks, how turtles became so so very popular.
As we said, it's because they were specifically Chelonia midas
green sea turtles. They can weigh up to a hundred pounds, right,
(10:53):
the size of a dog and the size of a
large dog. I guess I should say, Casey, what's the
average size of a dog in your opinion? Oh jeez,
the average size of a dog. Don't google it is
a hundred pounds a big dog. That's a big dog.
That's a big dog. Okay, Casey on the case. These
(11:14):
turtles are the size of a Casey verified large dog
and at their peak, as far as their soup career,
these turtles, the specific green seed turtles were being shipped
live from the West Indies at a rate of fifteen
(11:35):
thousand per year shipped live. So at some point there
was a ship that just went from England to the
Indies to get turtles. No way, right, no way, they
were doing other stuff. Surely there wasn't just a turtle trade,
was there. Average size by the punds is a big
(11:56):
gass dog always coming through Casey on the case A
second time turtle trade. I mean yeah, I would say
fifteen thousand live turtles being shipped from the West Indies
a year would constitute its own trade. That's a lot
of live turtles. But you know a lot of things
(12:17):
were being shipped back and forth on those routes, so
it was just kind of part of the party, I think. Um,
but it's because the stuff really really was catching on,
because you know, when the sailors brought the turtles back
and the royals started, they started getting a taste for it,
started getting a taste uh, and they actually felt or
(12:39):
culinarily speaking, um, this is the answer to my question. Uh.
They believed that turtles contain seven distinct different types of
meat all in one package. Um, each have having their
own unique yet also um you know uh analogous flavor uh,
something akin to pork and chicken and beef and shrimp
(13:02):
and veal and fish and goats. Um, depending on the
type of turtle or the part of the turtle. I'm
not a cent sure. This is blowing my mind. Um.
And then that that's coming from people who were really
into the stuff, who got that taste and I was
talking about. Then there are some folks did not buy in.
They describe the flavor as being dirty, mushy, chewy. To
(13:24):
be fair, these are more textures than flavors, uh and muddy. Yeah,
that's the thing. You know. You hear this sometimes with
people who eat shark or eat catfish. Right, they'll say, oh, uh,
this taste of the things this has eaten. One note
(13:45):
here there are a lot of people who will tell
you not to eat a large catfish, the reasoning being
that one can only eat so much garbage before one
becomes a thing. The taste of garbage. Oh yeah, and
let's all be real. I mean, if we've ever seen
turtles in the wild, chances are they're nibbling on something
(14:05):
slimy and gross. I had two pet turtles. They were wonderful.
I let both of them go free in a Harry
and the Henderson's moment. I also want to point out
that while the turtle trade was at its height, at
its peak, uh, the Atlantic slave trade was occurring. So
(14:30):
this this happens within that context, right, and the qualities,
as they were called at the time, what would become
the United States. Of course, they looked over and they said,
look at this, just down the maritime street from us.
(14:51):
The king and all the King's men are taking these
amazing turtles. They taste of seven different distinct types of meat,
and we're not allowed to have those. That's too fancy
for us, apparently. And they also got into it the
(15:12):
the American colonists of the time, we should also mention,
of course, this was not a new thing to the
people who actually lived in the places that would become
called the Caribbean and the United States. People totally ate turtles.
They didn't think it was a necessarily super fancy thing.
(15:34):
You know, they didn't idealize or fetishize it the same
way that perhaps the Europeans did. Uh. If Casey nol
you and I went to the early US colonies, we
would be eating turtles. We would not be eating the
(15:55):
big fancy Caribbean turtles. Probably we would be eating snapping turtles,
which are super gross looking creatures. I don't know if
that if have you guys seen one of these in person? Yeah,
back to the Ninja Turtles movie, Uh, Ninja Turtles too,
Secret of the Ooze. You may recall the large mutated
snapping turtle that was I think paired with some sort
(16:17):
of werewolf esque creature. That was the They were the
batties in that movie. Tell you Bebop and rock Steady
No no, no, no, the names. Yeah, but there was
a snapping turtle and then like a wolf kind of
creature and they were they were shredders, minions and and
and Ninja turtles too. Secret of the ooze. But yeah,
that started off as a little baby snap and turtle
(16:37):
because they have sort of more of a triangular pointy
beak situation and they really will take off a finger
if you're not careful. But that didn't stop intrepid early
American settlers in Plymouth Colony. Uh, you would even see
them eating the turtles eggs. And nothing pisces off a
mama snapping turtle more than you're trying to steal her eggs.
(16:58):
In fact, there's conject sure that turtle soup of some
kind might have or would likely have been on the
menu at the very first Thanksgiving um. But they you know,
wouldn't have been as fancy as as the version that
we were talking about from England. It would have been
a more simplified kind of version because of what they
had at their disposal. By the Revolutionary War times, turtle
(17:21):
soup was a staple, an absolute favorite. You'd see it
in cookbooks across the country. And that's how you know
something's really broken through is when you start seeing recipes
for it and like, you know, the Hinz Family cookbook
or whatever, Toca and that's it. That's it. Toca was
the wolf guy Razzolator was the was the snapper. Alligator
(17:44):
snapping turtle was crazy. I am a bit sad. Admittedly,
alligator snapping turtles are vulnerable species. You're absolutely right they
may have been eating turtle soup in some form of Thanksgiving.
It did not have tomatoes, it did not have shary,
it was not fancy. All the early colonists agreed that
(18:07):
the flavor, however, was scrump dittally umptuous. There's nothing like
a good turtle soup, and the colonists began to identify
this with the concept of democracy. How weird is that?
You know? It's right, it's not. It's not difficult to
(18:28):
hunt a turtle, unfortunately, apologies to any turtles in the audience.
Your evasion skills are your dump stat You could find
turtles hanging out in your neck of the woods, whether
you were wealthy or whether you were poor, and you
will find in the historical record many many famous, like
(18:54):
influential early US figures who were super into turtle soup.
They loved it, and need to backtrack ever so slightly. Ben,
I love this idea of catching a turtle representing democracy,
and I see why now, because it's the great equalizer.
You know, to catch a fox, he gotta have fancy hounds.
You know, to do a rabbit hunt or something, you
(19:16):
have to have like specialty gear and like a whole
crew and all of that and horses and all that
whatever that stuff. Turtle you can just catch one in
your backyard. Little kids can catch turtles. I have there
for everybody, including John Adams, who, upon voting for independence
in Philadelphia on July four a, seventeen seventies six, celebrated
(19:37):
with a steaming, piping hot bowl of turtle soup and
George Washington. When the war, the Revolutionary War was over,
he met with his officers at France's tavern in Manhattan,
which was famously personified with a freestyle rap battle in
the musical Hamilton's Uh for a you know this little
soare uh presumably with some with some turtle soup, and
(20:01):
also before Aaron Burr also featured in Hamilton's Murdered the
Titular Hamilton's. Both were members of something called the Hoboken
Turtle Club, where members would kick it and eat turtle
soup with boiled eggs and brandy. Okay, I can't go
with them all the way I'm not anti boiled egg.
(20:22):
I'm skeptical of the contribution of boiled egg can make
to a good bowl of turtle soup. It is a
real thing. The Hoboken Turtle Club is the brainchild of
a former captain serving under George Washington, a guy named
(20:42):
John Stevens. He got super rich through real estate and
various inventions, most notably a screw driven steamboat. Uh. He
was super into turtles because he wanted to eliminate their population.
I also love the idea, like that's the thing people have,
(21:03):
these weirdly specific clubs and extra curricular activities. Like if
you guys started a weirdly specific club about food, Noel,
would you have one immediately? Do you have one that
you can think of immediately? Like this is Noel Brown's
weirdly specific food club. You know. Um, when I was
(21:24):
a kid, when I was once a young German boy
growing up in in Germany, UM, I was a huge
fan of scargo, which is kind of a weird one
for a little kid, but you know, my parents were
into it. I liked it. My mom always you know,
never let the facts and the way of a good
story and says, know you and you were a small
German boy, you ate you'll wait and escar go up
(21:47):
and down the German countryside, because that's how she talks,
because she's an heiress of sorts. But maybe I would have.
And then the Noel Brown Scargo Society because it's not
something people talk about much anymore. And uh, I think
it's a bad rap. I like the texture, it's chewy,
it's got a nice ummmy to it, and it's just
a great vehicle for garlic and garlic butter. It's sunctious.
(22:10):
What about you, Casey? Okay. One one real life eccentricity
of mine is that when I was a kid, I
enjoyed a delicacy known as a mustard sandwich, which was
a sandwich with mustard and nothing else. And this was
met with a great deal of consternation by a kindergarten
teacher of mine Casey's Mustard Sandwich Club. I don't know
(22:30):
if I'll just kind of lurk. I don't know if
I want to be an inducted, but I'm interested to
see what goes on behind those closed doors. I have to.
I have to fess up, like I have not myself
been a member in a number of years. So um,
no hard feelings if you're if you're not looking to join, No, Well,
taste evolve over time. You know, you may have been
ahead of the curve because I've read several studies showing
(22:53):
that people in younger years prefer ketchup, and as the
age into adulthood, prefer mustard if they had to choose.
Nothing like this is happening with turtles. People are all
on board. In the US. They're like, man, you know
what's awesome turtle soup. William Howard Taft is like he's
(23:16):
asked about what his favorite meal is and he says
turtle soup is one of his top tens. And he
also says he chose the chef of the White House
based primarily on the guy's ability to cook turtle in
any form. And we have to mention again, Remember I
(23:39):
I I said that this was occurring during the slave trade,
right during the Middle Passage, when there were vast, systemic,
unforgivable atrocities against human beings. Right, you may not be
surprised to find fellow ridiculous as storians that wealthy Southerners
(24:04):
loved turtle soup. Of course, turtles were were, and hopefully
will still be abundant in the south. The plantation owning
class picture the mint julup and the sear sucker suit.
Every so often they said, ma, this parishian heat, we
(24:26):
should throw a turtle frolic. That's what they call them.
They had these parties they called the turtle frolics. That
sounds fun, it does if you're not there at the time,
because again, this is this is terrible, terrible stuff is
man's in humanity demand. But the turtle frolic itself is wild.
(24:48):
They would have these turtle shells. These were the Caribbean turtles,
by the way, the ones that are over a hundred pounds. Uh.
They would have these three ft long shells that were
turned upside down as bulls for the turtle soup. You know,
have you ever seen the inside of a turtle shell.
It's it's got it's kind of like where the spine
(25:09):
is fused to the shell and there's it's it's a
little macabre if you think about it now. I mean,
I guess you know, eating an animal directly out of
its shell is always going to be a little on
the grizzly side if you think about it enough. But yeah,
lit Graham, but moving on from the turtle frolic. In
(25:32):
America in the eighteen sixties, turtle soup for turtle meat
was considered like a very special occasion related delicacy. Abraham
Lincoln Um at least was personally responsible for pushing for
this narrative after his second inauguration in eighteen sixty five.
(25:54):
The inaugural meal began with a course of turtle uh
likely oiled in a stew with cream and butter and eggs,
so more like a uh like if you've ever had
oyster stew, which I quite like. My mom makes it
for Christmas every year. It's sort of a tradition, but
it is sort of a creamy buttery. You could put
(26:15):
a little sherry in there, or like maybe she crab soup.
That's kind of what this reminds me of. I could
go for that, And I'm imagining the turtle meat would
be minced, so you wouldn't be getting like big, old, weird,
recognizable chunks of turtle. One would hope. I'm intrigued, you know,
aside from the endangered element of this, I would certainly
be game to give this type of version of this
(26:38):
dish a taste. But only folks like you know, the president. Yeah,
I could have could afford this as a special occasion
for their inaugural. That's because they were becoming much more rare.
And I'm wondering if it was because there was just
a run on these turtles, you know. And also remember,
as I want to point out to remember, how we
talked about how Charles Darwin supposedly eight every animal that
(26:59):
he studied. Yes, Jack O'Brien from dally Zeitgeist introduced us
to that troubling in corroborative fact. I looked into it.
Jack was right because he was a part of a
society too that just like eight weird animals. If I'm
not mistaken, it's called Boland society. That's the one. But
here's the thing, Uh, despite the scarcity of of these
(27:22):
uh succulent reptiles, folks still wanted their turtle soup, or
at very least something resembling it. So that's when I
don't know who figured it out, who coined this, but
that's when something called mock turtle soup started to come
into fashion as an alternative. Yes, yes, very similitude the
(27:44):
appearance of being true or real. Um, before we get
into this. I want everyone listening to day to think
a little bit about stuff like crab rangoon. How much
crab do you think is in that fans of American
Chinese food and a negligible amount. I mean, god, it's
(28:05):
like zero a fleck, you know. Zero. The thing is like,
we have imitation crab, we have we have a lot
of things that I would say are aspirational in terms
of flavor. You're totally right, and yet people like some
(28:25):
of them for their own reasons, like imitation crab has
it has a thing about it like you can't really
get it anywhere else, doesn't really taste like crab. It
kind of looks like crab. It's just I don't even
know what we've we've talked about it. I think it
contains other fish, like halibit that's like pressed and has
food coloring to give it the appearance of the little
red parts of the crab. But it's also very low calorie, uh,
(28:48):
and so a lot of people like eating it, like
in a diet situation. And it's also what you always
get on the inside of like a cheap kind of
California roll right right there. And for example, there are
sometimes I prefer to cook with imitation crab, depending on
the stack I'm making. If anything, the name imitation crab
is bad marketing. They just should have sold it as
(29:11):
its own thing. What do you call it, though, Ben,
let's have a quick brainstorm. Sessh, it would be a
good alternative name. Imitation crab, fish, press pressed fish, fish, butter,
fish butter. I'm into that. Fish butter is weird. It's
not quite there. It's a little weird. But but let's
get there. I think we're nailing that. Umami. They also
(29:31):
call it crab stick sometimes crab stick. Yeah, but it's
imitation crab stick. Yeah. So anyway, turtles, right, uh So,
not everybody as the president in the United States, a
problem that continues to the modern day. There are more
than three hundred and twenty million people in the US
(29:56):
who are not currently the president. We had a we
had a recent new addition to our ranks. Uh So,
if you are, like most people, not the president of
the United States, you cannot afford to eat turtle. It's
(30:16):
expensive because in some parts of the country. Again to
our earlier point, there is no refrigeration. In some parts
of the country, you can't get turtles. So you might
eat the next best thing, mock turtle soup. And and
let's let's make sure everybody feels their self worth their value.
(30:40):
Don't think these other people are fancier than you are.
At Abraham Lincoln's first inauguration, they did not serve turtle soup.
They served mock turtle soup because they couldn't get those
turtles from the Caribbean that were considered, you know, the
def acto ingredient for turtle soup. But everybody at the inauguration,
(31:05):
they're still super happy. They thought mock turtle soup was
not a joke but kind of a comparable delicacy. Right.
It's it's like the Ikea furniture of turtle soup. Okay,
so what is it? Uh? This is adorable question. We
pretty much know what it is. Uh. And it's pretty gross,
(31:28):
isn't it. It's not it's not like super wholesome, but
it is. It's definitely a thing. Why don't kick it
for us? It's just like where you put all your
leftover meat parts, um, but it also contains other bits
to give it like a little more flavor. It's really
kind of all over the place. The real gross one,
the common ingredients or like the secret ingredient is a
(31:52):
calf's head. I'm assuming just boiled in there, like so
the skin kind of sloughs off and to and then
they take the skull out. I wouldn't imagine you get
your mock turtle soup with a fully formed cow calf
skull in there. What a huge turtle? Is this? Like kingcake?
I got the baby? Oh yeah, but they would add
(32:16):
things like beef, ham, veggies, oysters, uh, skin, tongue, brain,
and and and because they were trying to mimic. And
we haven't really uh fully explained this, but texture is
a really important part of the mock turtle experience because
(32:36):
turtle meat, as it turns out, is quite gelatinous um.
And in order to achieve that, you'd have boiled various
boiled meats. And again I can imagine that all of
the collagen and things that would be that would would
come off when you boiled the calf's head would make
for quite a gelatinous texture. Indeed. Yeah, and part of
(32:59):
the creation of mock turtle soup depends on the rendering
of this fat right in in the calf's head. Uh. Look,
other people are making their own turtle soup at home
or mock turtle soup. And you can see recipes about
this uh anywhere from two on maybe a little bit earlier.
(33:22):
Current companies and the modern day here in also had
canned turtle soup. Once upon a time, Hinz had turtle soup,
Campbell's had turtle soup and mocked turtle soup made of
that calf's head. And they were advertising this toward a
(33:45):
demographic that could not afford that beautiful, unctious, weird flex
turtle soup. Here's why they were doing this. Most people
couldn't deal with the process saying of the turtle that
would be made for proper turtle soup. They would get
a turtle that was fifty sixty pounds maybe more. They
(34:10):
had to kill it. They had to cut off the head.
They had to hang it by its hind legs, its
hind fins excuse me overnight to drain. They had to
cut the fins off. They had to separate the upper
and lower shell from the flesh it was. It was involved.
Then they had to clean it. They had to get
rid of the innards. They had to preserve what they
(34:32):
called the green fat. And this is what renders when
you're cooking is what gives it that unctious flavor. This
is why it's the calf's whole head. And then after
after you prepared this, the soup, depending on the recipe
you take, is super complicated, super complicated. It takes hours
(34:55):
and hours and hours. I'm not walking away from that.
Putton super is appropriate here and it's hilarious. These turtles
themselves are very expensive, and they become more and more
expensive because, just like the fur trade around this time,
it's not sustainable. They're taking too much from the land
(35:16):
and green turtles as a result are almost hunted to extinction,
which makes the price higher and higher and higher. We
got a feedback loop at this point. Okay, okay, there's
so much more turtle discussions to be had, but I
think we're gonna put a pin in this one until
next time. UM, thank you so much, Ben for all
of the amazing turtle talk. Is going to be more
(35:38):
to come, Noel, thank you, and thanks to super producer
Casey Pegrham. Thanks to our research associate, our number one
teenage ninja turtle, Gabe. Hey Nold, what what ninja turtle
do you think Gabe would be? If we had to guess, Oh,
he's the smart one. What was that Leonardo? No Donna? Yeah,
(35:59):
I always Leonardo was the leader. I guess Donna Tello
was the science. He one right, he had the lab
I think gave would be that one gave. You know
what Gave is like a vultron asked kind of figure.
He's like all of the ninja turtles rolled into the one.
He's the wit of Michael Angelo, the braun and brave
of of of Raphael. You know, the leadership qualities of
Leonardo and the intellect of Donna Tello all rolled up
(36:22):
into one admittedly non turtle creature. And thanks as always
to our own. Uh. I don't know whether he's a
Taca or a razor, but Jonathan strictly a k the quizier.
He's more of a super shredder kind of figure there.
It is the secret of the ooze. Uh, thanks as
well to Christopher Hasiotis, uh Eves, Jeff co and uh Noel.
(36:45):
Thank you to you man. This has been a crazy ride.
We ended up with another two parter um. We did, indeed,
And if you want to tell us how you feel
about this one, I drop us a note. On social
media you can find us on Facebook, where we have
a group called the List Historians. Great conversations and means
sharing and all the good stuff there to be had
at your fingertips. You can also find us as a
(37:08):
show or as individuals on social media's as well. I
am on Instagram pretty much exclusively where I am at
how Now, Noel Brown? How about you? Man? You can
send me turtle recipes directly at Ben Bullying hs W
on Twitter or at Ben Bullying on Instagram. We'll see
you next time, folks. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
(37:36):
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much
for tuning in. Today's a day where we talk not turkey,
but turtles. Uh. My name is Ben. There's this this
handsome guy who does this show with me. His name
is Noel Brown. And he was, uh, we were hanging
(00:48):
out off air earlier and he was a little bit, uh,
a little bit mad about his headphones. Today it was
a little bit miffed about my cam situation. Yeah, as
what we call it in the biz. Hands Um. Yeah. Yeah.
One thing, this is a word to the wise. Don't
ever have children, because they will take your stuff with
impunity and never return it. The look is its own story.
(01:14):
But yeah, I'm basically wearing the type of like little
crappy plastic headphones that would have come with like a
Sony discman, you know in the nineties. I feel like
I should be listening to like, you know, throwing copper
By Live right now in my in my ears, um,
but instead we're talking about turtles. Turtle power, soup power,
Turtle soup power. Remember the amazing pizza ad campaign of
(01:38):
the nineteen nineties where like the teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
were in a glam rock band and there was a
whole soundtrack that they made with songs about pizza and
being turtles. Am I the only one that is this
like a Mandela Effects situation. I actually don't remember this.
That's our super producer, Casey Pegram. I just remember they
had a song. It was like this anthemic song. It
(01:59):
was like where the tur Turtles? You can count on
us Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was sort of on the
like cusp of the eighties and like the Rising Tide
of the nineties, but it's still was very like hair metal. Uh,
look it up. There must be videos around. I would
say it's on the cusp of K pop as far
(02:22):
as the zeit guys, you know, the Turtles could have
been bts. Uh they're on the way. They were missing
maybe three members. Uh, you're giving yourself hard time. No,
you're saying these are not your cans, but your mock cans.
Uh right, Well, I mean they technically are. Can't there's
(02:43):
just substandard. But I love the word mock by the way,
I think it's it's got a nice ring to it,
and of course it means false counterfeit some sort of
stand in, but it doesn't necessarily imply poor quality. Wonderful point. Yeah,
today's episode is about a thing that may be weird
(03:05):
to a lot of people. Here we're talking about it
off air before we started rolling today. It's about turtle
soup and mock turtle suit. We've talked in the past
about the wildest things we have eaten, by which I
mean the most scrumptious things in violation of the soft
cultural taboos in the West. You know, you can eat
(03:29):
a pig, you cannot eat a cat. Right, you can
eat cow, you cannot eat a dog, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Turtles are different, right, for a long long time, people
eight a lot of turtles. If you go back through
the menus of yesteryear in the United States, you will
(03:54):
see turtle soup offered as sort of a flex. You know.
It's like, now we're in a fancy place if we
see turtle soup on the menu, specifically sup It's strange,
isn't it that it no longer exists today? Like like
(04:14):
if you go to the fanciest restaurant in Atlanta, which
is universally acknowledged, check me on this guy's as a
restaurant named Bacchanalia. If you, guys are familiar good things,
never never had the had the pleasure. It's uh. It's
a nice place, it's a hefty place for your wallet.
(04:35):
But if you go even there, you will not see
turtle soup on the menu. So what happened? How did
this like, how did this become a phenomenon in the
world of cuisine? How did it become so popular? And
then why is it not as popular now? Yeah, I
actually just did a quick quick google wise turtle soup
(04:57):
not eating anymore? And you know the number one reason
is uh, probably the obvious one. Many species of turtles
are endangered. Um. And it turns out that the species
of turtles that were most popular were ones that today
would be considered uh on the endangered list, like the
Chelonia midas or the green sea turtle of the Caribbean,
(05:17):
which could weigh up to a hundred pounds. In England
in particular, in the mid seventeen hundreds, you would see
this dish on tavern menus. But it would have been,
like you said, men a bit of a flex. It
would have been up there with some of the most
expensive and kind of rarefied items even at you know,
a local tavern or a pub um because they had
(05:38):
to be freshly caught. Right. There was no shipping frozen
turtles all the way from the Caribbean to London because
at the time, of course, refrigeration was not it's a thing,
at least to the degree that it is now. Certainly
they could keep things on ice, but these turtles had
to be shipped alive and and kept in these special tanks. Uh.
(06:00):
Kind of like lobsters at the grocery store, only much
larger because again these were hundred pound creatures. Um. And
the soup itself was also made with some pretty fancy
ingredients like Madeira wine. That was kind of a simmered
broth where that was the base and then it was
seasoned with cayenne peppers and anchovies. So the whole thing
could often take like half a day to make, almost
(06:22):
like the way uh really fine raman broth takes a
really long time to make that like bone broth, you know,
you see the the experts or for fun, it really
does take a lot to make that broth. Um. Thankfully,
fu and ramen are are still relatively affordable. Oh yes, yes,
you make an excellent point here in u there was
(06:45):
no refrigeration. This was like ordering crab legs at a
restaurant in terms of dollar value. Right, this is the
most expensive thing on the menu. You take out your
deity one to impress them. You say, order whatever you want,
and then your date looks askance and you say, yes,
(07:08):
even the turtle soup for you, my darling, anything You
really loved me enough to let me eat this weird,
scaly broth based dish, right right, that's that's one of
the questions. Will explore why soup? Why? Why is it
soup rather than turtle freakacy? You know what I mean?
(07:31):
Fileto turtle? Right there we go. Yes, so we have
to wonder how did these turtles come to be shipped
to England in the first place. As written in Culinary Lore,
one of the explanations is that turtles provided protein during
(07:52):
sea voyages. Right. It's it's very easy to find, or
it was back in the day. Very easy need to find,
catch and eat them. And as any kid who has
ever had a box turtle as a pet knows, turtles
are very easy to capture and keep alive, so they're
(08:13):
not like fish. You don't have to have an aquarium,
just have a little standing water and your turtle friend
can splash around and live their turtle life around the
sailors who will later consume it. So they carried it
all the way back to Europe, and then people were
like royalty aristocrats and so on, said, what's the most
(08:36):
impressive thing you found in your travels and your adventures
to the west. And they would say, well, we found
this weird thing. It's like a snake, but it's got
a it's got the shell. Uh, here you go. And
I said, what do you do with them? And they said,
we eat them. Yeah, crack them open and and and
(08:57):
eat them up, because again, remember these are very large uh.
And obviously, you know, sea voyages were very long and arduous,
and um was hard to keep fresh meat and fresh
supplies on the ship. Typically it was like salted meats
or dried you know, fruits and things like that that
could be preserved and you know, not spoiled during the
long uh trips to see but they could kind of
(09:20):
keep this as fresh meat on hand. Um, and it
was probably one of the tastier options. You hear stories
of like uh, seafaring folk Uh, you know, sailors and whatnot,
like catching like albatrosses and seabirds and things like that,
and they're apparently just really gamy and disgusting and not
pleasant at all. And you know, I have not had
(09:41):
turtle soup personally, but for some reason, I'm picturing it
maybe tasting a little bit like alligator meat, only because
of the consistency of their scales and their skin and whatnot. Um,
so I would argue that the turtle was the original
chicken of the sea. There we go. I think I
think you earned that one. The thing is, you know,
(10:06):
the albatross is a terrible bird to kill. In the
world of sailor and maritime superstitions. We should absolutely do
an episode on maritime superstitions because it's good. It's gonna
be a two parter, it has to be. Uh, turtles
can be kept alive. They don't really have the means
(10:29):
to wander off once you get them on the ship. Right.
You may wonder, folks, how turtles became so so very popular.
As we said, it's because they were specifically Chelonia midas
green sea turtles. They can weigh up to a hundred pounds, right,
(10:53):
the size of a dog and the size of a
large dog. I guess I should say, Casey, what's the
average size of a dog in your opinion? Oh jeez,
the average size of a dog. Don't google it is
a hundred pounds a big dog. That's a big dog.
That's a big dog. Okay, Casey on the case. These
(11:14):
turtles are the size of a Casey verified large dog
and at their peak, as far as their soup career,
these turtles, the specific green seed turtles were being shipped
live from the West Indies at a rate of fifteen
(11:35):
thousand per year shipped live. So at some point there
was a ship that just went from England to the
Indies to get turtles. No way, right, no way, they
were doing other stuff. Surely there wasn't just a turtle trade,
was there. Average size by the punds is a big
(11:56):
gass dog always coming through Casey on the case A
second time turtle trade. I mean yeah, I would say
fifteen thousand live turtles being shipped from the West Indies
a year would constitute its own trade. That's a lot
of live turtles. But you know a lot of things
(12:17):
were being shipped back and forth on those routes, so
it was just kind of part of the party, I think. Um,
but it's because the stuff really really was catching on,
because you know, when the sailors brought the turtles back
and the royals started, they started getting a taste for it,
started getting a taste uh, and they actually felt or
(12:39):
culinarily speaking, um, this is the answer to my question. Uh.
They believed that turtles contain seven distinct different types of
meat all in one package. Um, each have having their
own unique yet also um you know uh analogous flavor uh,
something akin to pork and chicken and beef and shrimp
(13:02):
and veal and fish and goats. Um, depending on the
type of turtle or the part of the turtle. I'm
not a cent sure. This is blowing my mind. Um.
And then that that's coming from people who were really
into the stuff, who got that taste and I was
talking about. Then there are some folks did not buy in.
They describe the flavor as being dirty, mushy, chewy. To
(13:24):
be fair, these are more textures than flavors, uh and muddy. Yeah,
that's the thing. You know. You hear this sometimes with
people who eat shark or eat catfish. Right, they'll say, oh, uh,
this taste of the things this has eaten. One note
(13:45):
here there are a lot of people who will tell
you not to eat a large catfish, the reasoning being
that one can only eat so much garbage before one
becomes a thing. The taste of garbage. Oh yeah, and
let's all be real. I mean, if we've ever seen
turtles in the wild, chances are they're nibbling on something
(14:05):
slimy and gross. I had two pet turtles. They were wonderful.
I let both of them go free in a Harry
and the Henderson's moment. I also want to point out
that while the turtle trade was at its height, at
its peak, uh, the Atlantic slave trade was occurring. So
(14:30):
this this happens within that context, right, and the qualities,
as they were called at the time, what would become
the United States. Of course, they looked over and they said,
look at this, just down the maritime street from us.
(14:51):
The king and all the King's men are taking these
amazing turtles. They taste of seven different distinct types of meat,
and we're not allowed to have those. That's too fancy
for us, apparently. And they also got into it the
(15:12):
the American colonists of the time, we should also mention,
of course, this was not a new thing to the
people who actually lived in the places that would become
called the Caribbean and the United States. People totally ate turtles.
They didn't think it was a necessarily super fancy thing.
(15:34):
You know, they didn't idealize or fetishize it the same
way that perhaps the Europeans did. Uh. If Casey nol
you and I went to the early US colonies, we
would be eating turtles. We would not be eating the
(15:55):
big fancy Caribbean turtles. Probably we would be eating snapping turtles,
which are super gross looking creatures. I don't know if
that if have you guys seen one of these in person? Yeah,
back to the Ninja Turtles movie, Uh, Ninja Turtles too,
Secret of the Ooze. You may recall the large mutated
snapping turtle that was I think paired with some sort
(16:17):
of werewolf esque creature. That was the They were the
batties in that movie. Tell you Bebop and rock Steady
No no, no, no, the names. Yeah, but there was
a snapping turtle and then like a wolf kind of
creature and they were they were shredders, minions and and
and Ninja turtles too. Secret of the ooze. But yeah,
that started off as a little baby snap and turtle
(16:37):
because they have sort of more of a triangular pointy
beak situation and they really will take off a finger
if you're not careful. But that didn't stop intrepid early
American settlers in Plymouth Colony. Uh, you would even see
them eating the turtles eggs. And nothing pisces off a
mama snapping turtle more than you're trying to steal her eggs.
(16:58):
In fact, there's conject sure that turtle soup of some
kind might have or would likely have been on the
menu at the very first Thanksgiving um. But they you know,
wouldn't have been as fancy as as the version that
we were talking about from England. It would have been
a more simplified kind of version because of what they
had at their disposal. By the Revolutionary War times, turtle
(17:21):
soup was a staple, an absolute favorite. You'd see it
in cookbooks across the country. And that's how you know
something's really broken through is when you start seeing recipes
for it and like, you know, the Hinz Family cookbook
or whatever, Toca and that's it. That's it. Toca was
the wolf guy Razzolator was the was the snapper. Alligator
(17:44):
snapping turtle was crazy. I am a bit sad. Admittedly,
alligator snapping turtles are vulnerable species. You're absolutely right they
may have been eating turtle soup in some form of Thanksgiving.
It did not have tomatoes, it did not have shary,
it was not fancy. All the early colonists agreed that
(18:07):
the flavor, however, was scrump dittally umptuous. There's nothing like
a good turtle soup, and the colonists began to identify
this with the concept of democracy. How weird is that?
You know? It's right, it's not. It's not difficult to
(18:28):
hunt a turtle, unfortunately, apologies to any turtles in the audience.
Your evasion skills are your dump stat You could find
turtles hanging out in your neck of the woods, whether
you were wealthy or whether you were poor, and you
will find in the historical record many many famous, like
(18:54):
influential early US figures who were super into turtle soup.
They loved it, and need to backtrack ever so slightly. Ben,
I love this idea of catching a turtle representing democracy,
and I see why now, because it's the great equalizer.
You know, to catch a fox, he gotta have fancy hounds.
You know, to do a rabbit hunt or something, you
(19:16):
have to have like specialty gear and like a whole
crew and all of that and horses and all that
whatever that stuff. Turtle you can just catch one in
your backyard. Little kids can catch turtles. I have there
for everybody, including John Adams, who, upon voting for independence
in Philadelphia on July four a, seventeen seventies six, celebrated
(19:37):
with a steaming, piping hot bowl of turtle soup and
George Washington. When the war, the Revolutionary War was over,
he met with his officers at France's tavern in Manhattan,
which was famously personified with a freestyle rap battle in
the musical Hamilton's Uh for a you know this little
soare uh presumably with some with some turtle soup, and
(20:01):
also before Aaron Burr also featured in Hamilton's Murdered the
Titular Hamilton's. Both were members of something called the Hoboken
Turtle Club, where members would kick it and eat turtle
soup with boiled eggs and brandy. Okay, I can't go
with them all the way I'm not anti boiled egg.
(20:22):
I'm skeptical of the contribution of boiled egg can make
to a good bowl of turtle soup. It is a
real thing. The Hoboken Turtle Club is the brainchild of
a former captain serving under George Washington, a guy named
(20:42):
John Stevens. He got super rich through real estate and
various inventions, most notably a screw driven steamboat. Uh. He
was super into turtles because he wanted to eliminate their population.
I also love the idea, like that's the thing people have,
(21:03):
these weirdly specific clubs and extra curricular activities. Like if
you guys started a weirdly specific club about food, Noel,
would you have one immediately? Do you have one that
you can think of immediately? Like this is Noel Brown's
weirdly specific food club. You know. Um, when I was
(21:24):
a kid, when I was once a young German boy
growing up in in Germany, UM, I was a huge
fan of scargo, which is kind of a weird one
for a little kid, but you know, my parents were
into it. I liked it. My mom always you know,
never let the facts and the way of a good
story and says, know you and you were a small
German boy, you ate you'll wait and escar go up
(21:47):
and down the German countryside, because that's how she talks,
because she's an heiress of sorts. But maybe I would have.
And then the Noel Brown Scargo Society because it's not
something people talk about much anymore. And uh, I think
it's a bad rap. I like the texture, it's chewy,
it's got a nice ummmy to it, and it's just
a great vehicle for garlic and garlic butter. It's sunctious.
(22:10):
What about you, Casey? Okay. One one real life eccentricity
of mine is that when I was a kid, I
enjoyed a delicacy known as a mustard sandwich, which was
a sandwich with mustard and nothing else. And this was
met with a great deal of consternation by a kindergarten
teacher of mine Casey's Mustard Sandwich Club. I don't know
(22:30):
if I'll just kind of lurk. I don't know if
I want to be an inducted, but I'm interested to
see what goes on behind those closed doors. I have to.
I have to fess up, like I have not myself
been a member in a number of years. So um,
no hard feelings if you're if you're not looking to join, No, Well,
taste evolve over time. You know, you may have been
ahead of the curve because I've read several studies showing
(22:53):
that people in younger years prefer ketchup, and as the
age into adulthood, prefer mustard if they had to choose.
Nothing like this is happening with turtles. People are all
on board. In the US. They're like, man, you know
what's awesome turtle soup. William Howard Taft is like he's
(23:16):
asked about what his favorite meal is and he says
turtle soup is one of his top tens. And he
also says he chose the chef of the White House
based primarily on the guy's ability to cook turtle in
any form. And we have to mention again, Remember I
(23:39):
I I said that this was occurring during the slave trade,
right during the Middle Passage, when there were vast, systemic,
unforgivable atrocities against human beings. Right, you may not be
surprised to find fellow ridiculous as storians that wealthy Southerners
(24:04):
loved turtle soup. Of course, turtles were were, and hopefully
will still be abundant in the south. The plantation owning
class picture the mint julup and the sear sucker suit.
Every so often they said, ma, this parishian heat, we
(24:26):
should throw a turtle frolic. That's what they call them.
They had these parties they called the turtle frolics. That
sounds fun, it does if you're not there at the time,
because again, this is this is terrible, terrible stuff is
man's in humanity demand. But the turtle frolic itself is wild.
(24:48):
They would have these turtle shells. These were the Caribbean turtles,
by the way, the ones that are over a hundred pounds. Uh.
They would have these three ft long shells that were
turned upside down as bulls for the turtle soup. You know,
have you ever seen the inside of a turtle shell.
It's it's got it's kind of like where the spine
(25:09):
is fused to the shell and there's it's it's a
little macabre if you think about it now. I mean,
I guess you know, eating an animal directly out of
its shell is always going to be a little on
the grizzly side if you think about it enough. But yeah,
lit Graham, but moving on from the turtle frolic. In
(25:32):
America in the eighteen sixties, turtle soup for turtle meat
was considered like a very special occasion related delicacy. Abraham
Lincoln Um at least was personally responsible for pushing for
this narrative after his second inauguration in eighteen sixty five.
(25:54):
The inaugural meal began with a course of turtle uh
likely oiled in a stew with cream and butter and eggs,
so more like a uh like if you've ever had
oyster stew, which I quite like. My mom makes it
for Christmas every year. It's sort of a tradition, but
it is sort of a creamy buttery. You could put
(26:15):
a little sherry in there, or like maybe she crab soup.
That's kind of what this reminds me of. I could
go for that, And I'm imagining the turtle meat would
be minced, so you wouldn't be getting like big, old, weird,
recognizable chunks of turtle. One would hope. I'm intrigued, you know,
aside from the endangered element of this, I would certainly
be game to give this type of version of this
(26:38):
dish a taste. But only folks like you know, the president. Yeah,
I could have could afford this as a special occasion
for their inaugural. That's because they were becoming much more rare.
And I'm wondering if it was because there was just
a run on these turtles, you know. And also remember,
as I want to point out to remember, how we
talked about how Charles Darwin supposedly eight every animal that
(26:59):
he studied. Yes, Jack O'Brien from dally Zeitgeist introduced us
to that troubling in corroborative fact. I looked into it.
Jack was right because he was a part of a
society too that just like eight weird animals. If I'm
not mistaken, it's called Boland society. That's the one. But
here's the thing, Uh, despite the scarcity of of these
(27:22):
uh succulent reptiles, folks still wanted their turtle soup, or
at very least something resembling it. So that's when I
don't know who figured it out, who coined this, but
that's when something called mock turtle soup started to come
into fashion as an alternative. Yes, yes, very similitude the
(27:44):
appearance of being true or real. Um, before we get
into this. I want everyone listening to day to think
a little bit about stuff like crab rangoon. How much
crab do you think is in that fans of American
Chinese food and a negligible amount. I mean, god, it's
(28:05):
like zero a fleck, you know. Zero. The thing is like,
we have imitation crab, we have we have a lot
of things that I would say are aspirational in terms
of flavor. You're totally right, and yet people like some
(28:25):
of them for their own reasons, like imitation crab has
it has a thing about it like you can't really
get it anywhere else, doesn't really taste like crab. It
kind of looks like crab. It's just I don't even
know what we've we've talked about it. I think it
contains other fish, like halibit that's like pressed and has
food coloring to give it the appearance of the little
red parts of the crab. But it's also very low calorie, uh,
(28:48):
and so a lot of people like eating it, like
in a diet situation. And it's also what you always
get on the inside of like a cheap kind of
California roll right right there. And for example, there are
sometimes I prefer to cook with imitation crab, depending on
the stack I'm making. If anything, the name imitation crab
is bad marketing. They just should have sold it as
(29:11):
its own thing. What do you call it, though, Ben,
let's have a quick brainstorm. Sessh, it would be a
good alternative name. Imitation crab, fish, press pressed fish, fish, butter,
fish butter. I'm into that. Fish butter is weird. It's
not quite there. It's a little weird. But but let's
get there. I think we're nailing that. Umami. They also
(29:31):
call it crab stick sometimes crab stick. Yeah, but it's
imitation crab stick. Yeah. So anyway, turtles, right, uh So,
not everybody as the president in the United States, a
problem that continues to the modern day. There are more
than three hundred and twenty million people in the US
(29:56):
who are not currently the president. We had a we
had a recent new addition to our ranks. Uh So,
if you are, like most people, not the president of
the United States, you cannot afford to eat turtle. It's
(30:16):
expensive because in some parts of the country. Again to
our earlier point, there is no refrigeration. In some parts
of the country, you can't get turtles. So you might
eat the next best thing, mock turtle soup. And and
let's let's make sure everybody feels their self worth their value.
(30:40):
Don't think these other people are fancier than you are.
At Abraham Lincoln's first inauguration, they did not serve turtle soup.
They served mock turtle soup because they couldn't get those
turtles from the Caribbean that were considered, you know, the
def acto ingredient for turtle soup. But everybody at the inauguration,
(31:05):
they're still super happy. They thought mock turtle soup was
not a joke but kind of a comparable delicacy. Right.
It's it's like the Ikea furniture of turtle soup. Okay,
so what is it? Uh? This is adorable question. We
pretty much know what it is. Uh. And it's pretty gross,
(31:28):
isn't it. It's not it's not like super wholesome, but
it is. It's definitely a thing. Why don't kick it
for us? It's just like where you put all your
leftover meat parts, um, but it also contains other bits
to give it like a little more flavor. It's really
kind of all over the place. The real gross one,
the common ingredients or like the secret ingredient is a
(31:52):
calf's head. I'm assuming just boiled in there, like so
the skin kind of sloughs off and to and then
they take the skull out. I wouldn't imagine you get
your mock turtle soup with a fully formed cow calf
skull in there. What a huge turtle? Is this? Like kingcake?
I got the baby? Oh yeah, but they would add
(32:16):
things like beef, ham, veggies, oysters, uh, skin, tongue, brain,
and and and because they were trying to mimic. And
we haven't really uh fully explained this, but texture is
a really important part of the mock turtle experience because
(32:36):
turtle meat, as it turns out, is quite gelatinous um.
And in order to achieve that, you'd have boiled various
boiled meats. And again I can imagine that all of
the collagen and things that would be that would would
come off when you boiled the calf's head would make
for quite a gelatinous texture. Indeed. Yeah, and part of
(32:59):
the creation of mock turtle soup depends on the rendering
of this fat right in in the calf's head. Uh. Look,
other people are making their own turtle soup at home
or mock turtle soup. And you can see recipes about
this uh anywhere from two on maybe a little bit earlier.
(33:22):
Current companies and the modern day here in also had
canned turtle soup. Once upon a time, Hinz had turtle soup,
Campbell's had turtle soup and mocked turtle soup made of
that calf's head. And they were advertising this toward a
(33:45):
demographic that could not afford that beautiful, unctious, weird flex
turtle soup. Here's why they were doing this. Most people
couldn't deal with the process saying of the turtle that
would be made for proper turtle soup. They would get
a turtle that was fifty sixty pounds maybe more. They
(34:10):
had to kill it. They had to cut off the head.
They had to hang it by its hind legs, its
hind fins excuse me overnight to drain. They had to
cut the fins off. They had to separate the upper
and lower shell from the flesh it was. It was involved.
Then they had to clean it. They had to get
rid of the innards. They had to preserve what they
(34:32):
called the green fat. And this is what renders when
you're cooking is what gives it that unctious flavor. This
is why it's the calf's whole head. And then after
after you prepared this, the soup, depending on the recipe
you take, is super complicated, super complicated. It takes hours
(34:55):
and hours and hours. I'm not walking away from that.
Putton super is appropriate here and it's hilarious. These turtles
themselves are very expensive, and they become more and more
expensive because, just like the fur trade around this time,
it's not sustainable. They're taking too much from the land
(35:16):
and green turtles as a result are almost hunted to extinction,
which makes the price higher and higher and higher. We
got a feedback loop at this point. Okay, okay, there's
so much more turtle discussions to be had, but I
think we're gonna put a pin in this one until
next time. UM, thank you so much, Ben for all
of the amazing turtle talk. Is going to be more
(35:38):
to come, Noel, thank you, and thanks to super producer
Casey Pegrham. Thanks to our research associate, our number one
teenage ninja turtle, Gabe. Hey Nold, what what ninja turtle
do you think Gabe would be? If we had to guess, Oh,
he's the smart one. What was that Leonardo? No Donna? Yeah,
(35:59):
I always Leonardo was the leader. I guess Donna Tello
was the science. He one right, he had the lab
I think gave would be that one gave. You know
what Gave is like a vultron asked kind of figure.
He's like all of the ninja turtles rolled into the one.
He's the wit of Michael Angelo, the braun and brave
of of of Raphael. You know, the leadership qualities of
Leonardo and the intellect of Donna Tello all rolled up
(36:22):
into one admittedly non turtle creature. And thanks as always
to our own. Uh. I don't know whether he's a
Taca or a razor, but Jonathan strictly a k the quizier.
He's more of a super shredder kind of figure there.
It is the secret of the ooze. Uh, thanks as
well to Christopher Hasiotis, uh Eves, Jeff co and uh Noel.
(36:45):
Thank you to you man. This has been a crazy ride.
We ended up with another two parter um. We did, indeed,
And if you want to tell us how you feel
about this one, I drop us a note. On social
media you can find us on Facebook, where we have
a group called the List Historians. Great conversations and means
sharing and all the good stuff there to be had
at your fingertips. You can also find us as a
(37:08):
show or as individuals on social media's as well. I
am on Instagram pretty much exclusively where I am at
how Now, Noel Brown? How about you? Man? You can
send me turtle recipes directly at Ben Bullying hs W
on Twitter or at Ben Bullying on Instagram. We'll see
you next time, folks. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
(37:36):
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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