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Mutton Broth, Nourishing and Delicate
Take three pounds of the knuckle part of the leg of mutton, separate the shankbone, that it may lie flat in the saucepan. Cover with cold water, and mix in a table-spoonful of Scotch barley, which should be kept stirred until the water boils, then remove from the fire to simmer, adding salt, and skimming the surface while any scum rises. Strain off the broth for use, and serve the mutton with the barley round it. Time, three hours and a half to simmer.
An invalid-cookery broth built on one cut of meat and one spoonful of barley, with the meat served as a second dish. The technique is sound; only the shopping has changed.
- The cutA 3 lb mutton knuckle means the lower end of the leg, shank and all. Mutton (sheep over about two years) is rare in most supermarkets; a lamb shank or two, or a whole lamb leg shank end, gives the same gelatine, though a milder flavour. Ask a butcher for mutton if you want the original taste.
- Separate the shankboneThe instruction is to saw or joint the shank so the piece lies flat and stays submerged in a modest amount of water. A butcher will do this; otherwise choose a pot deep enough that the bone is covered without adding extra water, which only dilutes the broth.
- Cold water startThis is the hinge. Starting in cold water draws soluble protein out slowly so it coagulates as a coherent scum you can lift off. A hot start sets and disperses those proteins too fast, giving a cloudy broth that skimming will not clear.
- Scotch barleyNot the pearl barley sold today but pot barley, hulled and only lightly polished, so it keeps more of the bran and takes longer to soften. Pearl barley works and will be tender in about 45 minutes; add it later rather than at the start, or it will collapse into starch.
- Stir until boilingBarley thrown into cold water sinks and can stick to the pan base as the water heats. Keeping it moving for those few minutes is the likely reason for the instruction.
- Simmer, not boilAfter the first boil, hold the pot at a bare tremble, around 180F, for the three and a half hours. A rolling boil emulsifies the fat into the liquid and clouds it permanently.
- Salt and skimmingThe recipe adds salt as the pot goes off the fire to simmer, with skimming alongside. Add it lightly, since the broth will reduce; taste and correct at the end.
- FatMutton fat sets hard. Chill the strained broth and lift the cap off in one disc rather than trying to spoon it off hot.
- YieldThe recipe gives no water quantity, so the volume depends on the pan; reckon on four to six servings of broth, plus the boiled meat as a separate dish with the barley spooned around it. Boiled mutton served this way is traditionally accompanied by a caper or parsley sauce.
"Nourishing and delicate" is the language of sickroom cookery, and this recipe sits in a long British tradition of invalid diet in which broth, gruel and beef tea were the standard food for the convalescent, the elderly and the nursing mother. Cookery books of the period commonly made room for such dishes on the assumption that the household would at some point be feeding someone who could not manage a chop. Mutton was the everyday meat of nineteenth-century Britain in a way it is not now, and the knuckle, cheap and full of gelatine, was the standard broth cut. The barley is Scottish by name and by habit: barley thrived where wheat struggled, and Scotch broth, the fuller version of this same pot with root vegetables added, is its direct relative. The double service, broth first and the boiled meat after, looks like thrift rather than ceremony, and may well be why the meat is not cut up before cooking.