The Old-School Soup Loved By President Taft That's Now Illegal To Serve In Several States

William Howard Taft is one of my favorite presidents. Not because of his politics (TBH, I've never bothered to look into these), but because he was the most generously proportioned POTUS and, as you might expect, a man who really enjoyed his mealtimes — especially his now forbidden turtle soup. 

As one of the former presidents who enjoyed a nice steak, he was known to eat beef for breakfast; and one of his favorite presidential drinks was champagne (although he didn't overindulge in alcohol). But some of his favorite foods are less common now than they were when he was in office, back in the early 1900s. Roast possum, for example, isn't something you see on most menus these days. Terrapin soup, too, has gone the way of the dodo, and for somewhat similar reasons. While the small turtle known as the terrapin isn't exactly extinct, soup made from its flesh was once so popular it put a serious dent in the population. To protect those who remain, many states where they can be found have enacted laws that prohibit harvesting them for food.

Back in the day, though, Taft was hardly unique in his fondness for terrapin soup, as it was incredibly popular from the mid-1800s through the 1920s. The soup was definitely "rich people food," since it was made with butter, cream, and sherry. Further down the economic food chain, the less wealthy would make mock turtle soup out of calf's heads. No such substitutes were accepted by Taft, though. Taft Terrapin Soup, a chef-created concoction named in the President's honor, contained the meat of an entire turtle along with four pounds of veal.

President William Howard Taft died in 1930, by which time the turtle soup era was mostly over. The main reason for this was that Prohibition made sherry, a key ingredient, pretty difficult to come by. Taft may not have been indulging in his favorite soup by this point anyway, since during the last 25 years of his life, he cut down on fatty foods for his health. Still, the question remains: Why did the rest of us stop eating turtles?

Diamondback terrapins, which are North America's only estuarine turtles, live in a region that spans the East Coast from Massachusetts to Florida and extends as far west as Texas. Up until fairly recently, they were still harvested for meat. Maryland, which adopted the diamondback terrapin as its official state reptile, banned this practice in 2007, and it's also now illegal in Alabama, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Texas. In Florida, you may own a terrapin as a pet, but you can't catch and sell them for culinary purposes. South Carolina doesn't technically forbid turtling, but commercial harvesting is so strictly regulated that there hasn't been a permit issued in the 21^st century.

Catching diamondback terrapins seems to be legal in just three states: Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi. If you don't want to hunt your own, though, you can always travel to New Orleans to try a taste of turtle (if not necessarily terrapin). Several Crescent City restaurants, including Arnaud's, Commander's Palace, Brennan's, and Nash's Restaurant, still feature turtle soup of some sort on the menu.