How I came to serve the last tin of turtle soup left in England

In the 1960s I did a two year course in Hotel and Catering at Swindon Technical College at a time when colleges were still training young chefs in the way Escoffier had set out. Not only did we learn cooking skills we learned the skills of a waiter. In the second year, for two days a week, half the students would cook for a dining room of twenty four covers, while the other half waited at table. The other two days we swapped roles. Anyone could book a table and lunch cost three shillings and sixpence, which is approximately eighteen pence in today’s money. You could be served anything from Dover Sole to Boeuf Bourguignonne or Lamb Cutlets Reform to Lobster Thermidor, but it was a double edged sword; people knew they were being cooked for and served by students so equally you might get soup tipped down your neck or potatoes in your lap.

We had exams at the end of our training and the waiting exam not only included serving lunch to a table of four but also several individual tests. These might include: change a table cloth without showing the top of the table, serve half a dozen oysters, carry a loaded breakfast tray at shoulder height up a flight of stairs, or serve a bowl of turtle soup with the appropriate accompaniments.

Turtle soup was a very fashionable and a highly regarded starter at the time. It was the epitome of Haute Cuisine and had been for several hundred years. Of course it had been a long time since a kitchen could order a turtle to make the soup in-house. Dried turtle meat could be obtained but this was considered inferior to the real thing. So by the time I started to learn my trade, turtle soup came in cans and was made by a firm called Lustys. This soup was actually a consommé or clear soup. It had a rich meaty flavour and would have a couple of neat squares of turtle meat per tin. It could be served hot, or in the summer chilled where it would set to a light jelly. The classical accompaniments were sherry; either poured into the soup or served separately, and cheese straws. Whoever had decided that these two items should go with it had been long forgotten but we had to stick to the rules – this was classical cuisine and we didn’t question it.

My first proper job was in a traditional hotel where I worked as a waiter for some time. They had two menus – a table d’hôte which was a set menu at an inclusive price, and an a la carte – a bigger menu of more extravagant dishes individually priced for those who were wealthy, celebrating something or just wanting to push the boat out. There would be sections for main courses of fish, steaks, starters such as smoked salmon and prawn cocktail and a variety of soups one of which was the aforementioned turtle soup. It still came in tins from Lustys along with their other varieties: Game Soup and Lobster Bisque. The chef at this establishment was an older gentleman, nearing retirement age who told me more about the tradition of turtle soup. He had worked at the Savoy in the 1920s and told me that the turtle soup had been made in-house. The first ingredient to obtain was a live turtle. These were usually sea turtles and came from South America, Africa or Australia. They had to be live as the flesh would deteriorate over the journey if dead. When the turtle arrived it would, most of the time, be withdrawn into its shell with no easy way of despatching it. So a commis chef was given a noose and his job would be to sit and wait until the poor creature ventured its head out of the shell, whereupon the commis had to place the noose around its neck. It would then be strung up and – well, you can guess the rest. Getting the meat out of the shell required hammer chisel and saw, now with a tin from Lustys you only needed a can opener.

A few years on from this first job these types of menus had all gone out of fashion, everything changed, new influences took over and no-one would dream of serving or slurping turtle soup.

Fast forward my career to the early 2000s and I was working as a freelance chef and was asked to cook for a reality TV programme called Regency House Party where I was in charge of cooking Regency banquets, (after a crash course in the historical cuisine of that period). All was going well until half way through the shoot when one of the producers asked if we could source turtle soup as it was a great favourite in Regency times. It was hard enough to get some of the produce for these banquets and I doubted if I would be able to source a turtle or turtle meat even if I wanted to, remembering what I knew about its history. Then I remembered tinned turtle soup and the name of Lustys and started a search to see if  I could track any down thinking there might be ancient aficionados tucked away in corners of the British Isles that still got there supplies of turtle soup and therefore perhaps Lustys might still be making it in some factory somewhere.

I found that Lustys still existed and I telephoned to ask them. During the conversation I learned that they had stopped making it some time ago partly for ethical reason, partly because most of the turtles they used to use were now a protected species and partly because the demand had dwindled. I put the phone down and had to admit I had failed but perhaps we could use some beef consommé; after all TV viewers were hardly going to be able to detect the deception. But the next day Lustys rang me to say they had located a case of tins at the back of their warehouse. It was sent by courier and arrived the next day. Meanwhile someone had had the brilliant idea of serving it in an actual turtle shell and several researchers on the team were tasked with locating one. Several blanks were drawn until one of them turned up with a turtle shell from a museum in a nearby town and arranged to borrow it. It was brought into the kitchen and proudly presented to me.

One might think if you had never seen the inside surface of a turtle’s shell it might be pleasantly smooth much like a mussel or whelk shell but this is not the case. On examination I discovered that it was uneven with many crevices, fissures and lumps and bumps. This one also looked as though it had been a museum exhibit for several hundred years and was encrusted with the dirt and dust of centuries.

I protested, and though I had been asked to do many strange things for the making of this programmes I drew the line at poisoning the participants with a rare and exotic disease that might be lurking somewhere in the crevices of that shell. It was decided that some beef consommé would suffice for a shot of the turtle shell tureen which would then be thrown away and the real thing served in nice porcelain bowls – a deception known as ‘smoke and mirrors’ in the trade.

So there it was, I served the last bowl of turtle soup in England after several hundred years of it being the nation’s favourite.