[Sca-cooks] Turtle "delicacy/delight of princes and great lords"

[JIMCHEVAL at aol.com]

OK, the archives are wonky just now, but referring to the ever-invaluable  
Florilegium, I find:

"Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 05:58:42 -0700
From:  James Prescott <prescotj at telusplanet.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks]  Turtle Soup, was: (LONG!) Dragon Dormant
Baronial Investiture
To: Cooks  within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

At 21:30 -0500  2005-03-13, patrick.levesque at elf.mcgill.ca wrote:
>>  Medieval  turtle soup? Recipe?
>
>  There are two recipes for turtles in  the 'Ouverture de Cuisine'... 
(which has
>  been webbed by Thorvald -  my apologies, I don't have the URL handy, 
since I'm
>  working from a  printed copy). One of them can be seen as a turtle soup, 
stew,
>  or  turtle in broth... I haven't obviously experimented on it yet.

The French  version was actually webbed by Thomas Gloning -- I was
one of the people who  helped with the transcription.

The English translations by me are (draft  form):

170. To prepare a tortoise.

Take the tortoise, and slit the  throat, and let it die, then
put it to boil so long that you can pull the  shell away from
the flesh: then you will remove all the skin that you  find,
and take the flesh and the eggs if there are any, and put it
to stew  with good stock, and add a bit of mace, a bit of pepper
and rosemary,  marjoram, mint and fresh butter, and salt, and
white wine or verjuice, and a  fresh [sweet] lemon in slices,
and let it stew well thus, and  serve.

171. Otherwise. [Tortoise]

When the tortoise is well  cooked, fricassee it in butter, a
fresh [sweet] lemon cut into slices on top,  or make a sauce
on top with some toasted white bread, and some ground  white
[blanched?] almonds, and strain all well through cheesecloth,
add  sugar and ginger, and boil it so that it is thick, and add
the fricasseed  tortoise, and you will serve [it] thus.

Thorvald"
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-MEATS/exotic-meats-msg.text


Otherwise, La Varenne has a recipe for turtle soup which is specifically  
listed under Lenten foods.

Jim  Chevallier

Medieval food before the Crusades
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