Green Turtle Soup
Difficulty 3/5 Ingredients 16 Steps 10
Turtle soup is a soup made from the flesh of the turtle, often the green turtle or, especially in the United States, the snapping turtle, in which case it is commonly referred to as snapper soup (not to be confused with red snapper soup, which is made from the fish called a red snapper).
Ingredients
Forcemeat (optional)
- 6 tablespoons finely-chopped turtle meat
- 2 hard-boiled egg yolks
- 1 tablespoon butter
- Oyster juice/liquor (optional)
- Ground cayenne pepper
- Ground mace
- ½ teaspoon sugar
- 1 pinch salt
- 2 eggs
- Cracker crumbs
Soup
- 1 whole turtle, cleaned
- 2 onions
- 1 bunch of sweet herbs
- Brown flour
- 1 lemon, juiced
- 1 glass of Madeira wine
Steps
Forcemeat (optional)
- Rub minced turtle, yolks, butter, oyster liquor, cayenne, mace, sugar, and salt into paste.
- Mix in one egg. Shape into small balls.
- Dip in egg, then cracker crumbs. Pan-fry in butter.
Soup
- Remove entrails. Cut up coarser turtle meat and bones. Separate finer meat.
- Place coarse turtle in pot with onions, herbs, pepper, and salt. Cover with 4 quarts (4 liters) water. Simmer 4 hours. Strain broth. Discard solids.
- Simmer finer meat and green fat in 2 quarts water, 1 hour.
- If turtle has eggs, simmer them in water 4 hours.
- Reheat broth. Add fine meat. Thicken with brown flour. Simmer gently 1 hour.
- Add simmered eggs and/or forcemeat, lemon juice, and wine.
- Serve hot.
Notes from the original
- Green turtle can be purchased preserved in air-tight cans.
- Some cooks add the finer meat before straining, boiling all together five hours; then strain, thicken and put in the green fat, cut into lumps an inch long. This makes a handsomer soup than if the meat is left in.
Source. Adapted from “Cookbook:Green Turtle Soup” by Wikibooks contributors, revision of 2025-08-14, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Changes. Steps rewritten into short commands. Introduction shortened. Wiki formatting removed. This adapted recipe is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.