ISSUE 44, À LA CRÉOLE, Part 2: Soups
The Canon of Classic Gulf Coast Creole cuisine was defined for the most part by three works published between the years 1885 and 1900—La Cuisine Creole, The Creole Cookery Book, and the Times Picayune Cookbook. Yet an enormous number of important recipes were published during those same 15 years in other sources—recipes that increase the body of attested Creole Dishes by nearly 100 percent over those contained the in the trinity of founding texts. I will spend this issue of Foodlore and More (the next six sessions) reprinting many of these neglected recipes. Today, we will survey the soups that distinguished Creole kitchen craft.
SOUPS
It is characteristic of the Creole soups that they are always thick, fit to serve for a complete meal, both meat and drink. The Creoles are in accord with the north frigid people m thinking the transparent French consommes arc transparently too thin and next akin to nothingness. A good example of a Creole soup is a dish of Coney Island Clam chowder when the clams are numerous enough to crowd out the potatoes. Their soups are like the Spanish olla-podrida and the Turkish pillaws and such stews as the lights of harems are said to feed each other with, using their fingers instead of forks, a proceeding which would, however, have its inconveniences if chicken gumbo were the dish served because of its mucilaginous adhesive quality and the linked sweetness long drawn out which still connects each departing morsel with the parent dish. It is this mucilaginous quality, resembling that of cold flaxseed tea or infusion of slippery elm bark, that is the recommendation both of the green and okra pods and of gumbo file, and the more slipperyelmical the soup can be made by boiling down, the better it will be. [Jessup Whitehead, Hotel Meat Cookery]
Stock – A great secret of Tante Marie is her stock pot. Into this—a clean large saucepan set back on the stove—she drops all the scraps that come from the table: the bones from mutton and veal chops, from porterhouse, tenderloin and sirloin steaks, the shank of the mutton, the bone from the shoulder of lamb, bones from fowl and game, and the ham bone; all these are broken into convenient size and placed within the magic pot; all scraps of meat and remains of fowl; all is grist that comes to her mill, otherwise her stock pot, and water is added in the proportion of a quart and a half to every pound of meat and bone. Water is put on cold, the bones are broken but meat left as whole as possible, let it boil slowly and skim carefully; no vegetables are added, as they are likely to sour. Keep at steady boiling point from two to six hours, and towards the last add a fresh carrot and turnip peeled, a bouquet garni. When it is boiled down to about half strain into an earthenware vessel; let it cool and remove all the fat to use for drippings. The stock is ready for all soups and gravies. Irene H., St. Louis Republic (July 27, 1890).
Onion Soup à la Créole — Slice several large onions, fry them in a saucepan with butter; sprinkle with a little flour, and season with salt and pepper ; let the onions color a little, then stir in a quart of rich sweet milk, and let it boil up two or three times ; strain through a colander, and pour over fried croutons in a soup tureen. This soup is admirable when one is fatigued. UCB-14
Soup Maigre – Put a tablespoonful of butter, sweet and good, with a sliced onion, to fry in a large saucepan; peel and slice a carrot and a turnip; peel and cut into small bits one-half dozen small or four large tomatoes, make a bouquet garni of two bay leaves, a spring each of parsley and thyme, and a few cloves, and add all to the lightly browned onion. Pour on two quarts of boiling water, and cook gently for two hours. Have ready by that tie some boiled rice—two tablespoonsful thrown into a pint of boiling water, with a pinch of salt, will be enough—with the grains soft but whole, drain the water, and keep this rice warm until your vegetables are tender, rub them through a coarse sieve with a wooden spoon, season with salt and pepper to taste, and if too thick add a little boiling water. Put the rice into the pot with the strained soup and simmering for 10 or 15 minutes: serve very hot. Irene H., “Creole Cookery: The Economic and Nutritive Qualities of Well-Made Soups,” St. Louis Republic (August 3, 1890).
Creole Celery Soup – Take one shank of beef, one large bunch of celery and one cup of rich cream. Make a good broth of the shank of beef, and thicken the broth with a little flour rubbed smooth in a half cup of water. Cut the bunch of celery into small pieces and boil in the soup until tender. Strain, then add the cup of rich cream, pepper and salt. Biloxi Herald (March 2, 1895).
Podrilla à la Créole —Put some nice red, French beans to soak In some warm water the evening before they are wanted; then drain the beans, and put them in a sauce-pan over the fire, with enough water to cook the sauce thoroughly, however long it may take; add a piece of fat pork, cut in dice; season with pepper and pot-herbs, and let it cook. During this time blanche and soften suino rice in hot water; Stir in some lard; season with suit and pepper, then form a border of it all around a dish, and pour the beans in the middle, well cooked, and without the pot-herbs. There, really, yon have a homely, substantial dish, which eats well, and costs almost nothing, and comes in capitally after some little ragout or hash. “ Peterson’s Magazine p. 250. 55, 8 (March 1869), p. 250.
Fish Stock — Put into a saucepan some good butter, sliced onions, a little dried okra, and some sliced tomatoes; add as many different kinds of small fish as you can get — oysters, clams, smelts, prawns, crabs, shrimps, and all kinds browned, then add a bunch of sweet herbs, seasoning to taste, and some fish bouillon (as above) ; after this has cooked for another half hour, pound with a wooden pestle, strain, and cook again until it jellies. UCB-22.
[Crawfish] Bisque à la Créole (Madame Eugene). — Take a peck of fat crawfish, wash them through several waters to clean them, and boil them in salt and water which you use later for your bouillon ; take off the heads ; peel your crawfish; reserve twenty-four heads to stuff for your bisque; take all the rest of the heads and all the peeling, carefully removing the sand-bug, and pound them in a mortar; pour them in the bouillon, in which they were boiled, with a soup-bunch, a head of celery, salt, and pepper; let it simmer slowly two hours; in the meantime pound the tails of the crawfish you have peeled in a mortar, mix them with butter, chopped onions, chopped ham, salt, and pepper; bind it with the beaten yolk of an egg and fry it; stuff the heads with this; strain the bouillon, make a soup, in which you fry a chopped onion, till it colors ; strain this in your bouillon, and pour it boiling hot into your tureen over the stuffed heads and fried croutons of bread; a moment before serving stir in a tablespoonful of sweet red-pepper powder that is used for coloring. UCB-23 differs from Hearn p. 252.
Bouillabaisse New Orleans — Take several kinds of fish; skin, bone, and cut in pieces the size of an egg; mince an onion, a tiny piece of garlic, one large tomato, a few sprigs of parsley; put the whole in a saucepan with half a tumbler of the finest olive-oil, a pinch of pepper, and one of mixed spice ; when the onions are slightly colored, add the fish, salt to taste, and add an infinitesimally small piece of powdered saffron, a glass of white wine, and sufficient boiling water to come up to, but not cover the fish; or, add water in which clams have previously been boiled; this gives the bouillabaisse an exquisite flavor; let the bouillabaisse now boil fast for twenty minutes, or until the liquor is reduced by one fourth; then serve the fish in a very hot dish, and the liquor in another, over small thick squares of light white bread toasted on both sides. UCB-24.
Bouillabaise –Take a large fish of any kind that can be cut in slices without bones, take out the back-bone and cut the two sides in pieces of the right size for serving individually. Chop the bone and head in pieces and put them on to boil in two quarts of water. That makes the stock. Put into the stock a good pinch of saffron. It is in threads, something like fine-cut tobacco—can be bought, put up in tin boxes—and it colors the stock yellow. Put into the stock, also, a couple of bay leaves, a leek or green onion and seasoning of salt and pepper. Then to cook the fish, take a broad and shallow hotel saucepan and pour into it about a cupful of oil; mince a large onion quite fine and three or four cloves of garlic likewise and put them in with the oil. Dip the slices of fish in flour, getting a good coating on both sides, lay them on top of the minced onion in the saucepan, set over the fire, let simmer until they begin to color, and turn the slices over. At this stage in the cooking some will shake in a teaspoonful of curry powder, but the high-French, Provencal and Creole cooks will not. Curry is an Anglo-Indian product and not considered to belong to such ultra Gallic dishes as this. Now pour into the saucepan a pint of white wine, and then through a strainer add the quart or more of saffron-colored fish stock and let the whole simmer gently while the half-browned flour that the fish was coated with thickens the liquor and all the oil that has been used oozes to the top to be thoroughly removed by skimming. The sauce is thick—thicker than turtle soup. Make some toast very thin, brown and dry. Serve the fish upon the toast and the sauce poured over it. But a Creole restaurant dish of either this or courtbouillon is a soup plateful with the fish upon a slice of toast like a "Boston fancy" oyster stew. [HMC]
Courtbouillon à la Créole — Slice and fry some onions in a saucepan, with sliced tomatoes, salt, and pepper; clean and scale your fish; cut it in slices; put it in the saucepan with the onions and tomatoes and some water, add a little chopped parsley; cook till the fish is done ; then add a glass of claret, or white wine; let it boil up ; remove the fish, which you dress in a dish, on slices of toasted bread; strain the sauce, and serve poured over the fish. UCB-26.
Court Bouillon as Served at the Lake – Clean thoroughly and wipe dry either a medium sized red snapper or a half dozen slices of fish. In the bottom of a fish kettle put three or four carrots, peeled and sliced; two medium sized tomatoes, also peeled and sliced; a large onion, peeled and chopped fine; a sliced orange and a sliced lemon, a bouquet garni, made of a spring or two of parsley, one of thyme, two bay leaves tied together, a half-dozen tiny red pepper pods, or a large one mashed, spread these ingredients in the bottom of the kettle, lay the fish upon them, and cover with half white wine and half water, add a saltspoon of salt, set the kettle over a moderate fire and boil till the fish is done through. Take out the fish and lay upon a hot dish, and simmer the vegetables a little longer, then removed the bouquet garni, and pour the contents of the kettle over the fish. Serve at once, with croutons—small squares of bread fried pale brown in boiling fat—slices of lemon and springs of crisp parsley garnishing the dish. If wine is not used add large wineglasses of vinegar to the water instead. Irene H., “Creole Cookery: Another Dainty Dish,” St. Louis Republic (August 10, 1890).
Fish au Courtbouillon – Take a five-pound fish of any good variety, such as snapper, red fish or trout, remove the backbone and head, and boil them in water to make the stock. While it is boiling throw in a dozen cloves, a few pieces of soup vegetables, two bay leaves, and add a small can of tomatoes. Next, pour a cupful of oil into a broad and shallow hotel saucepan; mince a large onion and two or three cloves af garlic and fry in the oil until they begin to color. Add a basting-spoon of flour and stir it over the fire, then add through a strainer two or three pints of tomato stock, stir until it has become thick; add a pint of wine. Lay in the fish cut in slices; season with salt and cayenne and let stew until the fish is sufficiently cooked, about half an hour, and skim off all the oil as it arises. The sauce should be thick. Serve the fish on thin toast or with a strip of toast in the dish and the sauce poured over. Expediency: The dish of fish, au courtbouillon, is usually very good as served for the hotel dinner, and only a very poor imitation as served for breakfast. This is because the orders at breakfast are few and do not justify a careful preparation, and something is apt to be improvised out of tomato sauce and Espagnole that is not calculated to commend the dish to the customer for a second trial. Even for the dinner it may be difficult to prepare it through want of the proper kind of saucepan. The cook who once knows what the dish ought to be, however, will reflect that there are more ways to kill a kitten besides running a railroad train over it. The courthouillon can be produced very well indeed in a deep baking pan set in the oven on the bottom. Put in the oil, the onion, garlic, and slices of fish, then a pint or a quart—as the quantity needed may be—of tomatoes passed through a strainer, then soup-stock from the regular stockboiler, enough to cover the slices of fish; salt and pepper and then bake it. Add thickening and a cup of wine; tip up the pan and skim off all the oil from one end; serve on slices of thin toast. [HMC]
Oyster Soup à la Créole – For a hundred persons: 2 gallons of oysters and their liquor, 2 gallons of milk, 2 cans of mushrooms, i onion, a handful of parsley, and half a pound of butter. Set the oysters over the fire to scald but not boil, when shrunken pour into a colander to drain, and set the liquor on again to boil. Boil the milk separately. Mince onion, parsley and mushrooms fine and throw them in a large saucepan with the butter, add the oyster liquor through a fine strainer, then the milk, and thicken till like cream with flour mixed with milk. Season with salt and pepper and put in the oysters at last. [HMC]
Oyster Soup with Powdered Okra or Gumbo – Mince a two ounce onion finely fry it in two ounces of butter without letting it attain a color, then add sixty medium oysters with their juice, and the same quantity of water, season with salt and red pepper, then place the saucepan on a quick fire and remove at the first boil, skim and thicken with two spoonfuls of powdered gumbo [file] for each quart of soup. Have some rice boiled in salted water; when done, mix in with it a little butter and set it in a buttered mold, place it in a hot oven for ten minutes and serve this separately, but at the same time as the soup, after unmolding it. Ranhoffer, The Epicurean, 276.
Catfish Soup — Six catfish, each weighing one half pound; half pound of salt pork, one pint of milk; two eggs; one head of celery; one onion. Skin and clean the catfish and cut off the heads; then bone and cut up the fish, and chop the pork into small pieces; put into the pot with two quarts of water, chopped sweet herbs, the onion, and the celery; boil to rags, then strain, and return to the saucepan ; add the milk, then tlie eggs, beaten to a froth, and a lump of butter the size of a walnut ; boil up once, and serve with dice of toasted bread on top. UCB-26 [CF VAHW-19 differs. Close to CSH-47]
Okra Gumbo – Take one quart of young okra. With the vegetable cutter slice them into rounds of twice the thickness of a nickel. Salt and flour them, and in a heaping tablespoonful of hot lard, fry it with a sliced onion until a light brown. Add three tablespoonfuls of tomatoes, a bay leaf, red pepper, thyme, marjoram, and salt to taste. Pour on this enough' boiling water to make soup for your family. Cover and boil gently for two hours. It should be quite thick when done. Send to table with boiled rice in a separate dish. [GH 1886-293]
Moreau’s Okra Gumbo Soup – Put a spoonful of lard in the soup pot on the fire. Cut up a chicken, a few onions, and a little ham. Brown, add sliced okra, mix, add a few tomatoes, cut up, and a small quantity of flour. Put all over a quick fire for a minute or two. Add water or beef broth, according to number of persons to be served. Season with salt, pepper, thyme, and bay leaf. Veal will do instead of chicken. Serve with boiled Rice. [Boston CS-1899-73]
Gumbo aux herbes – Into boiling salted water put spinach, lettuce and mustard tops in the larger quantities, and less of green cabbage, radish, and turnip tops. When thoroughly boiled, drain them in the colander, and chop them fine. Heat one tablespoonful of lard in a pot, to which add one pound of veal brisket, cut into small pieces, lightly floured, a sliced onion, and let them smother slowly for half an hour. Add a slice of raw ham cut fine, a pod of green pepper, the chopped herbs, and a quart and a half of boiling water, and let it stew for three-quarters of an hour. When done it should be almost of the consistency of dressed spinach. Serve in soup plates with boiled rice. [GH-1886-293]
Gumbo File with Chicken — Cut up and fry a large fine chicken in a saucepan with a slice of lean ham, two sliced onions, two sliced tomatoes, a little parsley, and some celery, salt, and pepper; fry all well together, and add two quarts and a half of water; simmer two hours and strain; put your chicken back in the soup, and just as you remove it from the fire, stir in a coffeespoonful of file powder ; serve with boiled rice and little green bird's-eye peppers. UCB-30. [PCC-25]
Gumbo File – Cut up a chicken or any other fowl. Put the pieces, lightly floured into a pot, in which has been heated, a heaping tablespoonful of lard. Add to this sliced onions, one or two, as liked. When browned, put in three tablespoonfuls of tomatoes, a slice of ham, cut up small, a bay leaf, a pod of pepper, thyme, marjoram and salt, and as much boiling water as will make sufficient soup . for your family. Let this broth, well covered, boil gently for two hours. Just before serving it, warm one tablespoonful for the file until it becomes mucilaginous, and add it to the soup. Serve immediately with boiled rice. Beef, veal, any game or poultry, crabs shrimps, crayfish, and oysters, make fine gumbo. When using shell fish, the base of the broth is better made of beef or veal, proceeding with it, as directed for chicken gumbo. [GH 1886-293]
Chicken Gumbo Soup – Cut two chickens raw into joints and chop these smaller, making about twenty pieces of each fowl. Put some buttery oil in a broad saucepan, a large onion minced small, a couple of slices of ham cut small and then the chicken, put in the lid and then set over the fire to braise In its own steam. Watch that it does not burn, but let the pieces acquire a light brown color with frequent shaking about. Then put in either a cupful of gumbo file or five or six times as much green okra sliced thin and fill up with four quarts of soup stock or broth. Tie up a seal.' bu~,ct of soup herbs, consisting of parsley, green marjoram, bay leaves, leek and celery, and let them boil in the soup. Simmer at the side of the range an hour or two, skim off the fat that rises, season with salt and pepper and take out the faggot of herbs. It makes a dull greenish soup. Although there is no particular rule about the quantity of gumbo to use, it is expected there will be enough to make the soup thick without the use of flour. Boil some rice in plenty of water, wash it in cold water when done and pour it into a sieve to drain. Serve a good spoonful of the loose rice grains in each plate of soup as it is sent in. [HMC]
Creole Chicken Soup – Pluck, singe, and dress a fowl, wipe it clean with a damp cloth, but do not wash it, as that destroys the flavor; put three tablespoonfuls of lard in the bottom of a saucepan, and set it over the fire; when it is smoking hot put in the chicken, which, meantime, you will have cut in small joints, and fry it light brown; then add to it half a pound of ham or bacon, cut in small pieces, a large onion, sliced, a clove of garlic, six sprigs of sweet herbs or parsley, and six tomatoes, sliced, and fry for five minutes longer; when these ingredients are fried brown, add four quarts of boiling water, season the soup highly with salt and sweet red pepper, or pimiento, and simmer it slowly for two hours. At the end of an hour and a half, peel and slice six tomatoes, cut them in half-inch dice, fry them brown in a tablespoonful of smoking hot lard, and put them in a soup tureen. When the soup has cooked for two hours strain it into a tureen, on the fried tomatoes, and serve it hot. The chicken and ham from which the soup is made, form an excellent ragout, with the addition of some boiled rice, or garabanzos, a kind of dried pease* sold in the Spanish and Italian stores in the city. Lima beans or corn, either fresh or dried, may be substituted for the rice or garabanzos. [Corson-1885-12]
Creole Gumbo -- Premie chose le prens la viane la qui ye pele “tasso,” et mette li dance to chodiere avec en ti bren la graisse et en ti bren la farine, lese li toune so couleur empe brun, après ca ette empe dezonion et empe dulaye, pas tros dulaye, paske ca va fa! Li senti movai; après mette asse do lo por fai tan qui veulai, quan li Presque fini mette file la; main mobile di vous mete trios ou quat feuille lerie la dan. Si to gaien des crab ou de chevrette to capab mette ye la dan. Voye li bien qui li pas brule, et to va fai bon gombo. Moblie di, fo mange li avec du riz. [Coleman: Guide to New Orleans-1885-91]
Beef Gumbo (Olympe Boudinot) — Cut up one and one-half pounds lean beef into small bits; season with full teaspoon pepper, two teaspoons salt. Slice in one large onion, one potato, three or four large tomatoes, about sixteen fresh, young, small ochras. Cover well with about a quart cold water. Allow it to boll very slowly, cover fitting tightly, until everything is like pulp or rags. Then put through the colander. Toast four slices of bread, cut in quarter slices, or dry stale bread in oven, and break into fragments; put them in bottom of tureen or deep vegetable dish and pour the gumbo over. [Chicago Daily News Cook Book-414]
Shrimp Gumbo – Wash a gallon of shrimps in plenty of water to free them from sand and boil them in six quarts of water, with » piece of bacon, two leeks and two bav leaves. Take off the scum that rises. In another saucepan fry a minced onion and two or three cloves of garlic in oil, put in a quart of tomatoes, only cut in pieces, and a cupful of gumbo file (which is powder of dried okra) and then add the shrimp liquor through a fine strainer. Let boil together. Cool the shrimps, shell them, cut in pieces and throw them into the soup. Salt and red pepper to taste. All Creole soups are thick and nearly all eaten with rice. Have some cooked rice ready and serve a spoonful in each plate of gumbo as dished up. [HMC-384-85]
Shrimp Okra Gumbo — Slice your ochra and fry it in butter or lard, with onions, salt, and pepper; boil your shrimps, remove the heads, and peel the tails, and fry them in a saucepan with chopped ham, onions, and cayenne pepper; pour your fried ochra and shrimps into a soup pot; slice in a quart of fine ripe tomatoes (or in winter take a can of tomatoes) ; cook slowly two hours, and serve with boiled rice. Always serve fresh green peppers with gumbo. [Unrivaled Cook Book-30]
Crab Okra Gumbo is made in the same manner, substituting crabs for shrimps. USB-30
Gumbo File with Oysters — Boil a large, fine, fat chicken in two quarts of water, add a slice of ham, and season to taste. Take the liquor of fifty oysters and pour it in the bouillon. When the chicken is cooked, take it out of the soup; strain your soup through a colander, and just before serving throw in the oysters, and let them cook five minutes, till they are plump; remove your soup pot from the fire, and stir in an after-dinner-coffeespoonful of the file powder and serve immediately; serve with boiled rice. This is the Southern Soup de rigieur for suppers.
Gumbo Of Soft Shelled Crabs a la Creole —Take eight large soft-shell crabs; pare off the small legs, flaps, and gills, which are spongy and generally sandy; wash, drain well, and cut each crab in about eight pieces ; put in a saucepan two ounces of butter, two chopped shallots, and two ounces of ham cut small; fry a little, add half a pint of white wine, five pints of white broth, salt, pepper, a bunch of parsley with aromatics, half a green pepper cut small, and finally the crabs; cover, boil slowly for an hour; remove the parsley, skim the fat, and finish with six tablespoonfuls of gumbo-powder, dropped by the left hand raised somewhat high, while stirring with the right hand to prevent the soup from getting lumpy; season highly, pour into a soup-tureen, and serve with plain-boiled rice on a separate dish. Delilee, The Franco-American Cookery book, p. 431.
Crab Gumbo – Chop some crabs, already cooked, into large pieces, the body making four or six and each large claw two pieces; crack the shells with the back of a knife. Make the same way as chicken gumbo, using the pieces cf crab in place of chicken, or, make a strong vegetable soup thick with gumbo file and boil the pieces of crab in it. Serve with rice in the plates. A dantier sort of crab gumbo could be and doubtless is in some places made with the crabmeat picked from the shells. The above method of chopping in pieces and serving the shells and all in the plates is the only way it ever appears at public tables. [Whitehead, Hotel Meat Cookery]
Lobster Gumbo – Two pounds of lobster-meat taken from the shell in two large pieces, breaking as little possible. Two teaspoonfuls of butter and one of salad oil. A tablespoonful of minced onion. Three fresh tomatoes—large and ripe; one sweet green pepper; six okra pods; cayenne and salt to taste; one cup of boiling water. Melt the butter in a saucepan, lay in the lobster, turn over to coat it thoroughly, add the hot water and stew gently, covered, half an hour. Strain from the meat, which should be kept hot over boiling water until you are ready for it again. Heat in other pan the oil, minced onion, and green pepper, the sliced tomatoes and okras. When the mixture smokes turn in the lobster-broth; simmer half an hour, rub through a fine colander and stir almost dry over the fire. Turn out upon a hot platter, lay the lobster upon this bed, and serve. Pass sliced lemon with it, and toasted crackers. [Marion Harland, The National Cook Book, 84-85]
Snails – New Orleans is said to be the largest consumer of snails in this country. In preparing them for food, they are first thrown into hot water and killed. Then the are washing a weak solution of lye, which removes the slime, and the shells are cleaned with stronger lye. The meats are next boiled and replaced in the shells with a dressing of bread and parsley, and thus prepared, the snails are roasted. (Southern Cultivator, Vol 45, 481).
Green Turtle Soup à la Créole —Here is the ancient Creole recipe for turtle soup, and it is safe to say that when once eaten after this delightful way no other will seem quite as savory. Cut the turtle in small pieces. Let it brown in a pot with a little lard. Cut up several onions, a slice of ham and a little garlic, and stir and mix well with the turtle. Then let the mixture brown well. Put in some flour and mix. Pour a quantity of soup stock into the pot. Let it boil and add a knee-joint of veal. Let this simmer for a full hour. Then put in some thyme, laurel leaf, parsley, shallots, and when everything is cooked add a thin slice of lemon chopped, boiled eggs and a little more parsley. Just before dishing add a wine glass full of Madeira or § that amount of lemon juice, and you will have a soup fit for a king's table. (Maude C. Cook, Breakfast, Dinner, and Supper, 59.)
Turtle Soup à la Créole – Make Spanish sauce as already directed with considerable tomatoes in it. Take as much soup stock as you have sauce and mix them together, add salt and pepper to taste and add some thickening when it boils. Then into every gallon put a can or more of cut turtle, half a lemon cut small, one quarter cup of sherry. Egg balls can be made by pounding hard boiled yolks of eggs with a little butter and flour to make a yellow paste that can be rolled into bales and boiled in water and then dipped into the soup. The turtle that is bought alive generally furnishes turtle eggs enough without resorting to the imitation. [Whitehead, Hotel Meat Cooking, 388]