Mock Turtle Soup

 Turtle soup is a great delicacy- and expensive. And so cooks faked up alternatives and called them mock turtle soup. The recipe varied but the ingredient most usually substituted for turtle meat was calf's head- not something you're likely to find in the modern kitchen.

Wikipedia tells me that Heinz used to do (perhaps still does) a mock turtle soup in a tin.

I expect it still appears on menus hither and yon, though I can't think I've ever seen it. As a vegan I am precluded from ever finding out what it tastes like.

I am writing about soup, because I was thinking about poetry- and more specifically how durable comic verse can be- and how the best of it outlasts the serious stuff- and even more specifically how I'm pretty damn sure that more people read and enjoy Lewis Carroll than read and enjoy his friend Alfred Tennyson.

No disrespect to Tennyson. I love him, but I love Carroll more- and, to complete the circle- deny that Tennyson ever wrote anything more touching, more deeply moving than the Mock Turtle's song, with it's unforgettable chorus......

"Soo-oop of the e-e-evening,
Beautiful, beautiful Soup!"

What could be more plangent than that?