Weird Island

47. WEIRD FOOD: Cuffy Cockroach’s Sea Turtle Soup

Episode Summary

People began eating turtle soup in the 1700s, and they kept eating it through the early 1900s. Companies like Campbell’s and Heinz made canned turtle soup (and something called mock turtle soup). And it wasn’t just available. It was a real culinary obsession. In the early days, there would be these big, elaborate parties, called Turtle Frolics, where people would get together to enjoy it. Including a notable Turtle Frolic in Newport, prepared and served by a talented chef named Cuffy Cockroach.

Episode Notes

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Episode Transcription

What’s the best soup you could imagine? Something so good, so rich in flavor and refined in ingredients, you’d find it on the menu at the Waldorf-Astoria or The Plaza or at the White House? A soup so good, John Adams, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Dwight Eisenhower all feasted on it. And in the book Hard Times, Charles Dickens associated social privilege with being fed this soup and venison. There were even social clubs devoted just to eating it, including perhaps the oldest social club in America.
So, what kind of soup are you imagining right now? A minestrone? Maybe a nice cream of mushroom? Or a clam chowder? Broccoli cheddar? Yum. I’m guessing turtle soup wasn’t the first thing that came to mind. But, that’s exactly the one.
People began eating turtle soup in the 1700s, back before America was America. And they kept eating it through the early 1900s. Companies like Campbell’s and Heinz and Worthmore made canned turtle soup (and something called mock turtle soup, but we’ll get to that). And it wasn’t just available. It was a real culinary obsession.
I’m Sara, and you’re listening to Weird Island. Each week, I’ll be telling you about the strangest stories I can dig up from my tiny, little state of Rhode Island. And this week, I’ll be sharing a weird food episode unlike the ones I’ve told before, because I’m talking about a food people really don’t eat much anymore. But, at one point, green sea turtle soup (yes, sea turtle) was a delicacy. And there would be these big, elaborate parties, called Turtle Frolics, where people would get together to enjoy it. Including a notable Turtle Frolic in Newport, prepared and served by a talented chef named Cuffy Cockroach.
It was December 1752, and a green sea turtle and a keg of limes had been hauled off a ship in Newport harbor. They had been shipped from the West Indies back to Rhode Island by George Breset, who was passing through the Caribbean. At the time, it was customary to either bring or send back a sea turtle, even if you were only passing through. The exotic animals were seen as a delicacy. And so while he continued on, he sent a turtle back.
The sea turtle arrived alive and well, having been transported in a tub of water, but the journey had been too long for the limes. Local merchant Samuel Freebody received the shipment with excitement. It would have been kind of an event. Because these turtles were so large, they provided more food than one single family could possibly eat. So they were prepared and served to big gatherings of people, and the party, which would include food, drinking and dancing, would be called a Turtle Frolic. Later, in other cities, you’d see newspapers announcing the arrival of a green sea turtle, illustrating just how notable it might have been.
The Turtle Frolic was planned for December 23rd. Now, Samuel Freebody would be the one hosting the party, and he had two things to figure out. Where would the party be held? And who would be cooking the feast? To answer the first, he had this idea to throw the party at Fort George, on Goat Island off of Newport. The fort was no longer active, and it might be the perfect place to all get together.
And when it came to the second issue of who would cook the feast, there was no question in his mind. It had to be the best cook around. Cuffy Cockroach.
Cuffy was born in West Africa, likely in Ghana, based on his name. It was common to be named after the day you were born, and Cuffy, or Kofi, means Born on Friday. But, aside from knowing the day of his birth, we know very little about Cuffy’s early life in Ghana. What we do know is that when he was young, he was captured into slavery and brought to Newport to work in the kitchen of a man named Jahleel Brenton.
In Newport, Cuffy became known as a talented cook. One account remembered that, “To say that Cuff had had a hand in dinner was to awaken the keenest expectations.” And another said Cuffy’s abilities were required in order to “satisfy the taste of the lovers of good living.” Specifically, Cuffy was described as standing “alone in his profession” in a very specific, high-skill role as a turtle cook.
Not just any cook could properly dress a turtle. While we don’t know exactly how Cuffy prepared the turtle that day, we have some sense of what it might have looked like from cookbooks published around that time. The earliest cookbook to include a recipe had been published just one year earlier, in 1751. It was Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy, and it included a recipe for “how to dress a turtle the West India way.” Another cookbook including a recipe for turtle would be published in 1753.
And what’s clear from all accounts is that cooking sea turtles was very complex and very expensive. The recipes could be 4, 5, even 6 pages long, and most put the cooking time for turtle soup somewhere around 30 hours, so we can imagine that Cuffy was working on the meal at least a day in advance of the gathering, likely more. And it wasn’t just turtle soup that he would have been preparing. There were multiple dishes that would be made from a turtle. The soup was the most popular, and kind of the centerpiece of the whole meal. But a 1769 recipe in the Experienced English House-Keeper noted that serving turtle in three different dishes at a frolic was not just common, it was expected. Other cookbooks included as many as 7 distinct dishes that came from preparing a single sea turtle.
On December 23rd, the day of the frolic, the weather was described as being superb, clear but not cold, despite the fact that it was just two days before Christmas. While about 40-50 guests made their way to Goat Island on a sloop, Cuffy put the finishing touches on the meal, which likely he would have served himself. I say that because other accounts of Turtle Frolics noted that the chef was present and recognized. And in addition, the presentation of the banquet was part of the ritual. Each unique turtle dish was described as having a very specific place on the table.
We know that dinner was served at 2, and a historian from the late 1800s states that it was served on Liverpool ware of novel patterns and mixed colors, blue and brown with cream colored edges, that would have been different from the dinnerware most had in their homes. The vegetable dishes were said to be molded into the form of pies and tarts. And the tureen (or soup dish) was said to have resembled a roast turkey, for some reason. Typically, a drink called Arrack Punch would have been served alongside turtle in Newport. It was a blend of rum, arrack, lime juice and sugar. And a well-mixed arrack punch was also seen as the sign of a great chef. But it’s unclear if it was served on this day, since the limes shipped back with the turtle went bad.
After the dinner, people would have relaxed for a bit until 5:00, when tea was served. And following tea, there was music and dancing until about 10pm. Hot toddies were served before the guests made their way back to land. Instead of all separating when they got back to Newport, they all made the rounds together, bringing people to their homes while the musicians from the party serenaded them.
Later, Samuel Freebody would send a letter to George Bresett describing the party. “Upon the whole the entertainment had the preference over all turtle frolics before it,” he wrote.
At the time when this party was held, sea turtle soup had just become popular as a high-end dish in both England and the American colonies. The first to eat turtle soup were far from royalty. Sea turtles are huge, like I mentioned (they can range from 50-300 or 400 pounds) and they were pretty abundant in the warm Caribbean waters. This meant they could easily be caught, and their meat would go a long way. So, early on, sea turtles featured heavily in the diet of enslaved people living in the West Indies as well as sailors, who kept turtles living on board ships to guarantee themselves fresh meat during long voyages. But it wasn’t long before slaveholders also began eating turtle soup, and the dish went from being accessible to suddenly being seen as a high-end specialty and a sign of privilege. The trend made its way back to England, where it would later be described as the most expensive soup on the table, and shortly thereafter people in the English Colonies developed a taste for it as well.
These early Turtle Frolics were certainly novelties. You can’t imagine hosting big meals like that all the time. But the taste for turtle soup wasn’t a novelty.
Beginning about a year after this party, demand for green sea turtles skyrocketed. While the soup was popular in England, it’s estimated as many as 15K turtles were shipped live to Britain. And North Americans developed a taste for it as well. By the 1790s, newspapers regularly advertised “real green turtle soup” that “gentlemen” could enjoy. The cost and inconvenience of preparation meant this wasn’t a luxury that was accessible to all. And costs only went up as sea turtle populations declined from over hunting.
This made sea turtle soup a symbol of wealth and power. In fact, one of the very first social clubs in America was formed with the sole purpose of eating turtle soup. It was called the Hoboken Turtle Club, and it was an exclusive group of politicians and literary figures and business owners who gathered together to throw big turtle frolics. John Stevens formed the club, along with Alexander Hamilton and it’s believed Aaron Burr and George Washington might have been members as well. The club actually had some longevity. It existed up until about WWII.
But while sea turtle soup was prohibitively expensive and labor intensive, early Americans aspired to eat the high end dish, and so a cheaper alternative was developed.
It was called Mock Turtle Soup, and recipes for this soup date almost as far back as recipes for actual turtle soup. The first one appears in 1758. Instead of being made with turtle, this one was made with a whole calf’s head, which mimicked the flavor and “gelatinous texture” of real turtle soup. This actually became incredibly popular, and it, too, was eventually seen as a specialty, making its way onto the menus at fancy restaurants while also being broadly available to all. It would remain popular for quite a while. Companies like Campbell’s, Heinz and Worthmore canned both real and Mock Turtle Soup up into the mid 1900s (Heinz sold it into the 1970s) and Andy Warhol remembered Mock Turtle Soup as his favorite, stating he would shop around for discontinued soup flavors trying to find it. Alice in Wonderland even included a character called the Mock Turtle, which poked fun at the trend. Alice says, “I don’t even know what a Mock Turtle is,” and the Queen of Hearts replies: “It’s the thing Mock Turtle Soup is made from.”
Others turned to locally available turtles as a more inexpensive alternative. Alligator Snapping Turtles were eaten, but it was the Terrapin that became incredibly popular. Terrapin soup was particularly popular in Philadelphia, where a unique recipe developed that included sherry. Again, though, the rise in popularity of the Terrapin mirrored that of the green sea turtle. Initially, these turtles were consumed by Indigenous people living in America. The name terrapin is actually derived from a mixture of Algonquin, Abenaki and Delaware words for edible or good tasting turtle. And later, local terrapins would feature in the diets of enslaved people forced to live along the southern coast. But by the mid 1800s, terrapin soup was making its way onto the menus of high end restaurants, like Delmonico’s in NY. And President Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural Luncheon in 1865 included terrapin on the menu. An article from 1899 noted that the price of terrapins jumped over a period of just a few years from $1 for a cartload to as much $160 for a dozen. And by the 1910s, terrapin was also out of reach for all but the very wealthy.
Today, you’d probably be surprised to see turtle soup on the menu in a restaurant. There are a number of reasons we don’t really eat it today. Turtles are now protected. All of the hunting of sea turtles, terrapin, snapping turtles and others has had a serious impact on turtle populations and caused ecological damage. So, eating a sea turtle is now a felony, and the terrapin and snapping turtle are protected from commercial hunting. But, Prohibition and changing American taste also played a role. When Prohibition started, it was difficult to find sherry, and so terrapin soup disappeared almost entirely from restaurant menus. And as the food industry shifted to prioritize convenience, there wasn’t really a taste or desire for the elaborate prep of turtle soup, and people have largely forgotten how popular the dish was.
This podcast is all about sharing unusual or hidden history in Rhode Island. And this story had layers. There’s the story of America’s weird relationship with turtle soup, which few people today know about. But even within that story, there’s the hidden histories of the people who were preparing that soup. The account we have today of the early Turtle Frolic in Newport was told from the perspective of the guests who attended. But we really don’t get the full story of maybe the most incredible person at that event.
Cuffy Cockroach was a celebrated cook, and is today remembered as possibly the first caterer in Newport. In fact, the whole catering industry was virtually invented by free and enslaved people of African descent living in North America. The earliest account of a major catered event was a 1778 ball in Philadelphia, and it was catered by Caesar Cranshell (?). By 1820, Catering was a respectable and profitable business, founded and innovated by people of African descent. These men and women were described as having the “training and skills to cook for large numbers; manage books to minimize costs; transport china, silver, tables, linen, tents, and foodstuffs; hire reliable wait staff and cooking assistants; contract for entertainment; and speak eloquently at major gatherings.” Perhaps the most influential figure was Robert Bogle, who was born into slavery in 1774. He obtained his freedom and became an entrepreneur. Today, he is remembered as the originator of catering, and is famous for professionalizing the industry and putting Philadelphia at the center of it. And remember how Philadelphia was famous for its Terrapin soup? Well, Bogle was seen as one of the best at making it. From the early turtle feasts on board ships to the Colonial American Turtle Frolics to the restaurant days, black chefs played a major role in the Turtle Soup story.
According to the 1755 census, nearly one-fifth of the total population in Newport and Narragansett was enslaved. And we don’t get the stories of what these people lived through and experienced in the same way we get the histories of those in power.
In Newport, slaves worked in homes, or as tradesmen, manufacturers or shopkeepers. And some enslaved Rhode Islanders were able to take advantage of their skilled roles in society to resist slavery not by attacking it head on, but by working to purchase freedom for themselves, their families and their communities and build lives within the confines of slavery.
In researching this story, I came across so many stories of Rhode Island’s black entrepreneurs! Like the story of Emmanuel “Manna” Bernoon, a Providence man who was able to purchase his freedom and open the city’s first oyster and alehouse in 1732. Or the story of Dutchess Quamino, Rhode Island’s pastry queen. Or the story of famous cheesemaker, Elleanor Eldridge. Or master chocolate grinders, Obadiah Brown, Prince Updike and Abraham Casey. Okay, so, clearly I was only researching culinary history this week, so this is so far from a comprehensive list of the histories that deserve to be told. And when it comes to telling those stories, well, that’ll have to come on another day because I’m running out of time.
Beginning in 1971, Newport’s Turtle Frolic was remembered and celebrated during the city’s month long holiday celebration. Though I couldn’t determine if that still happens. I hope it does. I like celebrating these lesser known stories and the people behind them. But, of course, even though Newport has hosted turtle frolics in memory of that first one, real turtle hasn’t actually been on the menu. And even the Mock Turtle soup served these days generally includes ground beef instead of calf head. But if you can’t make it, you can also send a check to Worthmore, and they’ll ship you mock turtle soup in the mail.
Thank you so much for listening! If you liked this episode, I would love it if you could share it with your family and friends. And if you have an idea for an episode, I’d love to hear it! You can email me at weird rhode island @ gmail.com or find me on Instagram at weird Island podcast. See you next week as we dig up more stories about all things weird and wonderful in the little state of Rhode Island. Until next time!