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German Broth, or Winter Hotchpotch
Boil gently for one hour and a half a neck of mutton, weighing about three pounds, in as much water as will cover it, with one pound of dried green peas, which have been soaked in cold water for some hours, one pint and a half of carrots and turnips cut into slices, and half an ounce of bruised celery-seed, tied in a piece of muslin. Add one pound of mutton chops, cut from the best end of the neck, a dessert-spoonful of salt, and a tea-spoonful of pepper. Boil half an hour longer, and serve. Probable cost, 4s. Sufficient for six persons.
A one-pot boiled dinner of the plainest sort, and it works, but the two-stage addition of meat is the point of the method and easy to miss.
- Why the chops go in lateThe three-pound neck simmers an hour and a half to give body and gelatine to the broth; the second pound of chops is added only for the last half hour so it is still worth eating. Put all the meat in at once and you get good broth and grey, exhausted mutton.
- Neck of muttonMutton is older sheep, usually reckoned at over a year or two, stronger-flavoured and firmer than lamb, and not always easy to find outside halal and specialist butchers. Lamb neck or scrag end substitutes directly but is tender sooner, so check it at the hour rather than assuming ninety minutes.
- Dried green peasThese are whole dried green peas, not split peas and not the modern frozen kind. Soak overnight; a pound is a generous 2 to 2½ cups dry, and they will thicken the broth noticeably as they break down.
- A pint and a half of vegetablesThe measure is by volume after slicing; an imperial pint and a half is about 850 ml, so roughly 3½ cups of mixed carrot and turnip, near enough a pound. Use a proper white turnip or swede rather than anything sweet.
- Celery seedHalf an ounce is roughly 6 to 7 teaspoons, which is a lot of a very assertive spice; the muslin bag exists so you can pull it out. Tie it loosely, taste at the hour, and remove it early if the broth is turning bitter.
- SeasoningA dessertspoonful is two teaspoons. That plus a teaspoon of pepper is calibrated for a large volume of unsalted broth, but add it in stages and taste, particularly if you used any bought stock.
- Skim and keep it gentle"Boil gently" means a bare simmer. A hard boil will emulsify the mutton fat into the liquid and cloud it; skim the scum in the first fifteen minutes and the grey fat from the surface before serving.
- YieldSix substantial servings as written, meat and vegetables ladled out with the broth in the same bowl. It improves overnight, when the fat can be lifted off the cold surface in a cake.
Hotchpotch is the English form of the Old French hochepot, a pot whose contents are shaken or jumbled together, and the same word survives as Dutch hutspot and in Scottish hotch-potch, a summer soup of lamb and young vegetables. Cassell's calls this one German and winter, presumably for the dried peas and root vegetables that stand in for the fresh peas and broad beans of the Scottish version, though the attribution is loose in the way Victorian cookery books were loose about national labels generally. What is genuinely of its period is the costing: four shillings to feed six was the sort of figure that made a page like this useful to a household keeping accounts, and the recipe demonstrates the basic economy of the stockpot, where a cheap, bony cut is made to yield both a soup and a dinner at once.