SOUPS. 649 
Beautiful Soup! who cares for fish, 
Game, or any other dish ? 
Who would not give all else for two-p 
-ennyworth only of beautiful Soup ? 
Pennyworth only of beautiful Soup ?” 
(Refrain as before.) 
Of all Soups that which is most highly esteemed, both for its 
supreme restorative qualities, and for its exquisitely luscious 
flavour, is that made from the Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas), 
either when combined with costly adjuncts, and spicy condiments 
for the Aldermanic gourmet, or when delicately prepared, as a 
concentrated form of the most highly sustaining Invalid Turtle 
for a patient in desperate strait. ‘‘Grata testudo dapibus 
deorum,” said the Roman poet Horace concerning this amphi- 
bious reptile, so beloved by epicures, —“ Food fit for the gods!” 
Its dainty parts are the calipash, or large shield of the back, and 
the calipee, or shield of the belly (plastron); also Turtle steak, 
and Turtle fin. When plainly cooked Turtle flesh is easy of 
digestion. It was during the early part of the eighteenth century 
that Turtle Soup became a standing dish at civic banquets. 
Dr. Pereira has described Turtle flesh as “an appetizing, and 
wholesome aliment, nutritive, and light of digestion, yielding 
by decoction highly restorative broths which are much to be 
valued in consumptive diseases, and in other illnesses requiring 
‘concentrated light support.” The Green Turtle is plentiful 
about the Island of Ascension ; it lives upon vegetable substances, 
‘mostly seaweeds, and furnishes a very pure limpid oil, which 
is employed for various purposes, one being for burning in lamps. 
The flesh contains less fat than would be supposed ; it consists 
of three parts water, and in the remaining solids fat occurs only 
in the proportion of about one-half. The flesh when cooked 
is rich in gelatine, poor in fibrin, and yielding little, or no 
osmazome ; the green fat is of a greenish-yellow colour, giving 
this Turtle its distinctive name. The softer parts of the shields, 
and fins, are cut into squares when cold, or into oblong pieces, 
these constituting the favourite morsels in Turtle Soup, and 
being often erroneously mistaken for the green fat by complacent 
eaters; the green fat will communicate a green colour to the 
urine. Mock Turtle Soup is made either with Sturgeon flesh, 
or with the glutinous scalp integuments of the calf’s head. 
American cookery books order the addition thereto of “as 
