The KaiKai Book

In this video you will learn how to cook Green Turtle Blood stew

Turtle meat was highly prized by English diners from the 18th century forward. This exotic meat was the focal point of for wealthy feasts. Preparations were complicated; presentations were exquisite. Early recipes were served in the orginal shell. Mock turtle soup, substituting calve's heads for the title meat, surface shortly thereafter. Advertised as tasting like the "real thing," mock versions were readily consumed by middle class persons on both sides of the pond. Canned turtle soups (regular & mock) were introduced in the last quarter of the 19th century.

"The earliest recipes for dressing sea turtle were given by Richard Bradley (1732), and ascribed by him to a Barbados lady. ..He did not mention turtle soup, but this soon became a standard feature of English cookery books; it appeared, for example in the 4th edition (1751) of Hannah Glasse's famous book, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. Turtle soup, prepared from the calipee (flipper meat) was elevated in the 19th century to become a 'must' for civic banquets and suchlike occasions; and, since it was difficult and expensive to make, recipes for Mock Turtle soup, of which first seems to have been in Hannah Glasse's 6th edition (1758), became increasingly frequent."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 711)

On a visit to Kabulwarnamyo, Hagar Nadjamerrek takes us through the traditional process of cooking a short-necked turtle.