Politician Profits Off Terrapin’s Backs

With terrapin’s popularity on dining tables and on restaurant menus, the turtles became popular motifs, patented for everything from flatware to soup tureens in the gilded age.  

“Green turtle is the epicurean soup, par excellence.” - Eunice C. Corbett in Good Housekeeping Magazine, March 1894

“Send the terrapins to the table hot in a covered dish, and the sauce separately in a sauce tureen, to be used by those who like it, and omitted by those who prefer the genuine flavor of the terrapins when simply stewed with butter. This is now the usual mode of dressing terrapins in Maryland, Virginia, and many other parts of the South, and will be found superior to any other.” —From The Whitehouse Cookbook, 1887

United States Senator Dennis, of Maryland, has about twelve acres of land put down in a pond, that is fed by salt water. This pond makes the largest terrapin farm probably in the world, and is the source of a heavy income. In it, terrapins are raised for the market, and it is said that over 12,000 “count” have been sold from it in one year. It may be noted, for the benefit of the uninitiated, that a “count” is a terrapin over seven inches in length; and that “counts” sold by number—bringing from $10 to $14 a dozen, or about a $1 each. 

In market they retail for about $20 per dozen—and in the fashionable restaurants are served at $1.50 a plate —one terrapin filling about three plates. Smaller terrapins are sold at lower figures, but all bring good figures and are “diamond” backs in fact, as well as name. There are several terrapin ponds in Maryland, and they grow in importance as “terrapin stew, Maryland style,” is becoming more and more popular among high livers. The thriving city of Crisfield, in Maryland, ships terrapins by the thousands, along with its millions of oysters. — Napa County Reporter, 1884

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