This Now-Illegal Soup Was Once Coveted By President Howard Taft

In an attempt to categorize and label history, American presidents are often subjected to various rankings. We look at their lives, interests, and accomplishments to try to find some superlative that we can ascribe to them. William Howard Taft was elected in 1908, and his administration sought to take on some of the great issues of the time, such as reducing tariffs and breaking up monopolies, though he was generally considered to be a poor politician. Unfortunately, he is also known as the heaviest U.S. President — weighing 340 pounds. While this is certainly not how the man would like to be remembered, it does draw interest to several of his favorite foods, such as terrapin soup.

Surely Taft would have preferred his legacy to be focused on his time in office rather than seemingly minor details like his extra-large bathtub, but we like what we like. Frankly, many of us are more interested in reading a list of all of the presidents' favorite foods than we are in a list of their major political accomplishments. While President Taft was well-known for his appreciation of steak (he started nearly every day with a 12-ounce portion), he was also a lover of turtle soup. So much so, in fact, that the president kept a chef on staff who knew how to make his preferred version, called "Taft Terrapin Soup," using a whole diamondback terrapin turtle as well as several pounds of veal.

Now, Taft may have had his own special version of terrapin soup, and it may have been a regular preparation when important visitors dined at the White House, but he was far from the first person to eat a turtle. Heck, he wasn't even the first president with an affinity for turtle meat — Chester A. Arthur was an apparent lover of turtle steak, and he was elected in the early 1880s. Indeed, turtle meat has long been a part of many diets. In the Caribbean as well as North America, various species of turtles have long been on the menu. Both sea turtles and other species of aquatic turtles — such as snapping turtles and terrapins — were a regular foodstuff throughout history.

Turtle soup has often been the dish of choice, regardless of the exact species of the animal in question. In the Caribbean, the practice of eating sea turtles became quite popular with wealthy slave owners, and this affinity found its way all the way back to England, where Caribbean sea turtles could fetch a pretty penny. In the time of President Taft, the terrapin was the game of choice, a much smaller species endemic to the Mid-Atlantic that had long been a staple food for local peoples. Unfortunately, as is often the case, terrapin soup became glamorous at a breakneck pace. Railroads could now ship this local delicacy to the heart of the big city, and demand quickly outstripped supply, pushing the terrapin population steadily toward extinction.

Interestingly, the decline in terrapin harvesting is tied in part to Prohibition. Liquors like sherry and Madeira wine were a key component in the fancy terrapin soups that were so popular at the time. When Prohibition took these out of chefs' hands, the soup lost its appeal. Combined with the sky-high prices brought on by the declining populations and difficulty of harvesting, there were finally enough factors to remove terrapin soup from restaurant menus — though commercial harvest was not officially banned in certain places until the 21st century.

Over time, most of the world has come to recognize that turtles are not a viable food source. They are slow-growing creatures that take many years to reach the proper size for consumption. In addition to overharvesting, destruction of habitat and various other factors have led to significant population decreases across many turtle species, leaving more than 60% threatened or extinct (via BioScience). As a result, the consumption of terrapin and sea turtle meat is illegal in the U.S., and harvesting turtles for meat is banned in many countries. 

Despite being listed as endangered species by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), protected turtle species — particularly sea turtles — are still sometimes harvested for food. While this rarely affects terrapins anymore, the population is still in decline as a result of bycatch in crab traps, which often trap and drown them. President Taft was certainly a gourmand, and the state of the world was much different when he was in office, but there's a reason that mock turtle soup was invented — and we would all certainly do well to let our aquatic reptile friends live in peace.