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MUTTON BROTH (Invalid Cookery)
Boil two pounds of the scrag end of a neck of mutton in about three pints of cold water, and if the patient can digest vegetables, it will be much improved by the addition of a little turnip, parsley, finely minced, and onion. Put in the vegetables when the broth boils, and simmer three hours, take off the scum as it rises. Strain, and let it grow cold, then take off the fat. If pearl barley be added, it should be boiled as long as the meat, and before being put with it should be boiled in water for ten minutes, drained, and afterwards added to the broth. Veal may be boiled in the same manner; the knuckle is the part generally used for broth. Probable cost, 7d. Sufficient for a pint and a half to two pints.
A plain invalid broth from the era when convalescents were fed on meat liquor for weeks at a time. It works as a stock or a light soup, and the method is sound; only the cuts and the language need translating.
- Scrag endThe scrag is the bony neck end of the lamb or mutton neck, sold in Britain as scrag or neck of lamb and often absent from supermarket counters. Ask a butcher for neck bones with meat on, or substitute a 2 lb piece of bone-in lamb shoulder or shank; the bones matter more than the meat for body.
- Mutton vs lambMutton is older sheep, usually reckoned over about two years, though the trade line between hogget and mutton varies. It is stronger in flavour and generally fattier than modern lamb. If you use lamb the broth will be milder and paler, and there will usually be less fat to lift off.
- Start cold, stay lowThe hinge of the recipe is the cold water and the word simmer. Bring it up slowly and hold it at a bare tremble; a rolling boil emulsifies the fat and clouds the broth so that the skimming and chilling are wasted.
- Skimming and degreasingSkim the grey scum in the first twenty minutes, when it rises fastest. Chilling overnight and lifting the set fat cap off in one disc, as directed, removes far more fat than any amount of blotting while hot.
- BarleyThe ten-minute pre-boil and drain is not fussiness: it rinses off surface starch and the dusty flavour of the grain, so the finished broth stays clear rather than turning gluey. Pearl barley needs only about 40 minutes in the broth, so the instruction to cook it the full three hours will leave it collapsed.
- VegetablesThree hours cooks minced turnip and onion to shreds that all but disappear into the liquid. Add them for body and flavour as written if you are straining anyway, but if you want vegetables in the bowl, cook a fresh batch and add it to the strained broth.
- Veal knuckleThe knuckle is the lower leg joint, rich in gelatine, which is why it was the standard broth cut. A veal or beef shin bone does the same job and will set the cooled broth to a jelly.
- Yield and seasoningThree pints of water yields the pint and a half to two pints stated, so two to three servings as a light soup. No salt is mentioned; season to taste at the end.
"Invalid cookery" was a standard department of Victorian and Edwardian household manuals, sitting alongside chapters on stocks and sauces, because nursing the sick at home was ordinary domestic work and doctors prescribed diets in terms of beef tea, gruel, arrowroot and mutton broth. Mutton was thought particularly wholesome and easily digested, and the recipe's careful hedge "if the patient can digest vegetables" shows how closely such food followed medical instruction rather than appetite. The costing of 7d. suggests a manual of the kind that priced dishes so that a housekeeper could budget; the scrag end was among the cheapest cuts on the block, which is part of why it became the invalid's standby. The insistence on cooling the broth and lifting off the fat reflects the period belief, not wholly wrong, that fat was the hardest part of a meal for a weak stomach.