The Mock Turtle from Wonderland met a bad end

The first cookbook published in the United States

I am resting and reading today after writing too much too many days in a row…so of course, I just picked up a book related to my work-in-progress, Watching the Detectives, and its crowd of privileged Virginians. Because my brain never stops working, and I have not internalized when you’re done, get out of the kitchen, pun intended. So I am “resting” and perusing the first cookbook of these right ‘chere United States, written and published in this right ‘chere Commonwealth, The Virginia House-wife: Or, Methodical Cook (1824), by Mary Randolph. It was written back when recipes were called “receipts”, and were written in chatty paragraphs. (“At twelve o’clock, skim the scum from the top of the soup and add more onion…”)

The grand arcanum of management lies in three simple rules:—“Let every thing be done at a proper time, keep every thing in its proper place, and put every thing to its proper use.”

If that quote wasn’t embroidered into several 19th century samplers by squirmy little girls, cursing the name of Randolph, who knew when they were done sewing they had to learn how to organize a kitchen by this book’s directions, I’ll eat my needle minder.

Also, I will hazard a guess, that last part—“put every thing to its proper use”—was a quite genteel way to say “do not make the dead mock turtle dance on the table, you will frighten the guests and the help”. Because guess what I was just shocked to learn how to do?

1. How to properly, and in great detail, field dress a mock turtle in your home for preparing the soup of the same name

2. How to properly (hold on to your vegetarian knickers, this is even more gross) prepare the calf’s head for your mock turtle’s soup because mock turtle’s soup ain’t just turtle, and this sentence was casually used at the end of the recipe: “The eyes are a great delicacy.” Maybe for you, Mary.

No further explanation was given. How are the jeepers creepers prepared? Is mock turtle soup like a fortune cake—whoever gets the eyes has a good year on the farm or gets married next? I don’t want my soup looking at me with floating peepers, not after I have done all the therapeutic work and inner girding of loins necessary to eat turtle and calf’s head. It’s like Mrs. Randolph was feeling feisty and snuck a little horror story into all her receipts. “I’ll hit them with the field dressing, that image of a splayed and filleted turtle on their nice, clean dining tables, then give them the vapors with the eyeball finish. Fainting housewives all over the township! This going to be hilarious. ‘Twill serve them right for mocking my idea of a receipt book. Ha! A play on words.”

Now we know why John Tenniel’s Alice looked so disturbed by the Mock Turtle. Mrs. Randolph’s work had crossed the Pond. She knew all about it.

These are my “resting” shenanigans and this is my messed-up sense of humor.. Just be glad I didn’t share the recipe with you. To paraphrase George Carlin, these are the thoughts that keep me from making friends and influencing people. 🐢

Going to try to put this down and read some fiction. Until I start giggling about this macabre thing again and pick this book back up.

Okay, I have to say one good thing about it: Mary Randolph’s book of receipts convinced the new Americans to eat 🍅 tomatoes, formally thought of as poisonous in the New World, so there’s that. (They are consistently called “tomatas” in this books, and I will now be calling them so myself from now on. Wait for it…you say “tomatoes”, I say “tomatas”—