Mock Turtle Soup

History

Mock Turtle Soup is recipe No. 41 in "What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking," printed by the Women's Co-operative Printing Office in San Francisco in 1881 — among the earliest cookbooks by an African American author, and the second known cookbook by a Black woman in the United States after Malinda Russell's "Domestic Cook Book" (1866).

Abby Fisher was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina, in June 1831 to Abbie Clifton; genealogical research in San Francisco records identifies her father as James J. Andrews, an Orangeburg planter who held some seventy people in slavery, and an 1869 receipt from the Freedman's Savings and Trust in Mobile records her under her mother's name. Before 1865, censuses recorded only an enslaver's name with the age and sex of those he held, so no surviving record names Fisher herself; Karen Hess, who rediscovered her book, noted that absence of documentation. Fisher could neither read nor write and set the book down by dictation, explaining in her own preface: "Not being able to read or write myself, and my husband also having been without the advantages of an education — upon whom would devolve the writing of the book at my dictation — caused me to doubt whether I would be able to present a work that would give perfect satisfaction." She offered it as "a book of my knowledge — based on an experience of upwards of thirty-five years," and signed it "Late of Mobile, Ala." Her title page records a diploma at the Sacramento State Fair in 1879 and two medals at the San Francisco Mechanics' Institute Fair in 1880.

Fisher's version builds on a prepared calf's head, following her own calf's head soup directions exactly: "Use for flavor half of a lemon sliced, and put in tureen and pour hot soup on. Instead of brain-balls or cakes, make a forced meat of boiled ham chopped very fine with the yelk of a hard boiled egg; season with black pepper. Make balls the size of a hickory nut and fry in hot butter." She serves one ball to a plate, in a separate dish, and allows beef in place of ham "if liked best."

Mock turtle soup as a category is documented as an English soup created in the mid-18th century to imitate green turtle soup, using calf's head in place of turtle meat. Beyond that general background, the record documents no specific earlier origin for Fisher's own version — she set it down under her own name, among the soups and gumbos she had cooked for decades.

Ingredients

• 1 calf's head
• 0.5 lemon
• boiled ham
• 1 egg yolk
• black pepper
• hot butter
• beef

Instructions

1. Prepare the calf's head following the directions given for calf's head soup.
2. Chop boiled ham very fine.
3. Combine the chopped ham with the yolk of a hard boiled egg.
4. Season the mixture with black pepper.
5. Form the mixture into balls the size of a hickory nut.
6. Fry the balls in hot butter.
7. Slice the lemon and place it in a tureen.
8. Pour the hot soup over the lemon in the tureen.
9. Serve one ball to each plate of soup, presented in a separate dish.