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Broth, Strengthening
Put into a vessel four pounds of the scrag end of a neck of mutton, freed entirely from fat, and chopped into small pieces, with six pints of water. Boil, skim, draw the pan back, and simmer for an hour. Add three ounces of washed rice, with a turnip and some celery if liked. Simmer for two hours. Strain, free from fat, add salt, and serve.
A three-hour invalid broth built on one cut of meat and a handful of rice. The only real technique is temperature control: it must never come back to a rolling boil after the first skim, or the fat and albumen emulsify into the liquid and no amount of straining will clear it.
- "Draw the pan back"On a coal range this meant sliding the pot away from the hottest plate to a cooler part of the top. On a modern hob it is the lowest setting that keeps a lazy bubble breaking the surface every few seconds — around 180-190F.
- Imperial pintsCassell's six pints are imperial, 20 fl oz each: about 15 US cups, or 3.4 litres. Use a tall stockpot; three hours of simmering will reduce the volume appreciably, by more or less depending on how wide the pan is and whether it is covered.
- Scrag end of neckThe bony top of the neck, still sold by British butchers as scrag or neck of lamb and rarely labelled at all in US markets. Lamb neck, shoulder chops or shank all work; you want bone, connective tissue and very little fat, about 4 lb bone-in.
- Mutton versus lambMutton is sheep over two years old, stronger in flavour and much tougher, which is why three hours was needed. Modern lamb will yield its gelatine in less time; start tasting well before the full two hours the recipe allows after the rice goes in.
- Skimming and defattingSkim the grey scum the moment it rises, before adding anything else. The final "free from fat" is far easier if you chill the strained broth and lift the solid cap off, though a wide shallow spoon works if serving at once.
- The riceThree ounces (about 1/2 cup) of a plain long or medium grain, added for body rather than texture — it is strained out at the end. Washing removes surface starch so the broth stays clear rather than cloudy.
- Salt lastCorrect as the original: seasoning at the start becomes concentrated as the liquid reduces. Salt after straining, when you know the final volume.
- YieldRoughly 2 quarts of clear broth, or six to eight invalid servings of a cup each. It should set to a jelly when cold, which is a sign the bone and connective tissue have given up their gelatine.
"Strengthening broth" belongs to the sickroom cookery that fills a long stretch of every late-Victorian household manual, alongside beef tea, arrowroot gruel and calf's-foot jelly. The dietary theory of the period held that a patient too weak to digest solid food could still take nourishment in liquid form, and that the strength of the meat passed into the water — a belief that survived well past the point when chemists had shown most of the protein stays behind in the exhausted fibres. What the broth genuinely supplied was salt, warmth, fluid and gelatine, which is not nothing for someone convalescing. The choice of scrag end is telling: it was among the cheapest cuts on the block, so a household could keep a sick relative in fresh broth daily without extravagance, and mutton was generally reckoned more digestible than beef for the very frail.