Faux-Faux

One character in “Alice in Wonderland” may puzzle modern readers: the Mock Turtle, drawn as a calf’s head on a turtle’s body. He was one of Lewis Carroll’s absurdist whimsies, calf’s head being the basis of a dish called mock turtle soup. But that Victorian favorite, a staple of fancy American restaurants as late as 40 years ago, is scarcely ever seen today.

To make it, you boiled a calf’s head and added its broth to a strong meat stock, which you simmered with root vegetables and mixed herbs (always including basil, marjoram and thyme) for hours to make a gluey brown soup. Finally you added the meat from the calf’s head and some lemon juice, cayenne and Sherry. It tasted like meaty gravy with an elegantly funky undertone.

In origin, mock turtle soup was an imitation of turtle soup, made by boiling a sea turtle, shell and all, for six or seven hours with the same herbs, which were collectively known as “turtle herbs.” Real turtle soup was finished up with the same seasonings as the mock kind. Calf’s heads, needless to say, were easier to come by than sea turtles.

If the turtle had eggs, they were cooked and added to the soup as a garnish. If it didn’t, you added meatballs (which might have been fully as rubbery as turtle eggs). For the mock stuff, of course, it always had to be meatballs.

A similar heavy, meaty broth made from mutton and shin of beef--in effect, mock-mock turtle soup--was known as brown Windsor soup. It was one of Queen Victoria’s personal favorites, and proper British colonial officials would insist on ordering it even in the savage heat of the Indian summer.