Cooter Stew

Copyright 2010
Judith J. Bentley

While I was on extended family medical leave this summer visiting your Grandmother and disabled Uncle in South Carolina, I found your Grandmother's cookbooks in her pantry and cooked up some of the favorite foods she used to serve us when we were children growing up. Miss Juanita Hitt, a friend of hers, had published a cookbook containing family recipes dating back to 1690, the pre-Revolutionary War years through the Bi-Centennial years (covering 200 years of our history from 1776 to 1976). Miss Hitt's family members, like mine, hail from Virginia and South Carolina. Interesting historical notes and photographs are included along with old-time recipes from these two Southern States. There is the recipe for Martha Washington’s Cake, courtesy of The Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association. It requires 40 eggs, 4 lbs each of butter and sugar, 5 lbs each of flour and fruit. Mix all together and add a pint of wine and some brandy, a half ounce of mace and 1 nutmeg and cook for 2 hours! You’ll have to have a mighty big cake pan and oven to cook it. I also found the recipe for ole fashioned pulled taffy that my Grandmother Creighton, my Mother’s Mother, used to make for us as children in the summertime. After Grandmother boiled all the ingredients together—the molasses, brown sugar, butter, water, vinegar and baking soda--and poured them in a buttered pan to cool, she’d set the pan outside. When cool enough to handle, my sister and I would rub butter on our hands, take a small portion at a time from the pan, and pull the candy until it was light in color. Then it was ready to cut and eat. The taffy was more fun to pull than eat though. The most unusual recipe I found near the end of the cookbook – “Cooter Stew.” I’d never heard of cooter stew. Apparently, it is still served in some parts of our country, but from the violence that goes into the stew, it must date back to the 1690s. Ms. Hitt wrote that her mother told her how she made cooter stew in the early 1900s. It was a favorite dish of her father who fished often in the Enoree River where he would dig for turtles. He used choice large turtles, not the small terrapin type. Here is the recipe verbatim.

“A turtle snaps and is a mean one to clean. Take a broom handle and hold it near the turtle’s head which he usually cautiously keeps hidden under his shell. When he snaps for the handle of the broom, have the axe ready to cut off his head! The next problem is getting the critter from his shell. Lay him on his back in a tub of boiling water. When he has soaked for awhile, take a very sharp knife and cut around the breast bone and the other boney structure. When his boney frame has been cut away, then the legs and other meaty parts can be easily removed. Place cooter meat in a boiler and cover with water which has two or three strips of streaked fat back and salt to taste. Add a finely chopped onion and some parsley for flavor. Stew down low until the gravy is very thick. This is good served with hush puppies or mixed bread.”

I'm going to make my own version of cooter stew.  It'll be all vegetarian.