Home › The Principles of Cookery › Mutton Broth, Quickly Made
Mutton Broth, Quickly Made
Cut two thick chops from the neck, but remove the bones and all fat. Cut the meat into dice, and put them into a stewpan with a pint of cold water; then scrape the bones, break them, and add them, with a very small onion, a sprig of parsley and thyme, and some pepper and salt to the stewpan. Bring the water to the boil quickly, skim well, draw back, and simmer gently for twenty minutes, when the broth will be ready. Take off every particle of fat; this is much easier done when the broth is allowed to cool. It should be re-warmed by setting the basin in boiling water. Probable cost, 1s. per pound for the chops.
A twenty-minute invalid broth built on the principle that finely cut meat and cracked bone give up their flavour fast. It works, but expect a light, clean broth rather than anything with body.
- Neck chopsNeck of mutton is now sold as scrag end or neck fillet, and mutton itself is scarce; lamb neck chops are the ordinary substitute. Two thick chops, boned and trimmed, give roughly 5-6 oz of meat.
- Why dice the meatCutting to dice and cracking the bones is what makes this "quickly made" - it multiplies the surface area so that twenty minutes of gentle simmering extracts far more than whole meat and unbroken bone would. Do not skip the scraping and breaking of the bones.
- Draw back"Draw back" means pull the pan to a cooler part of the range - on a hob, drop to the lowest simmer where the surface barely trembles. A rolling boil will emulsify the remaining fat and cloud the broth.
- SkimmingSkim the grey scum the moment it rises, before the liquid boils properly, or it breaks up and disperses. The later fat removal is easiest cold, when it lifts off as a solid disc.
- A pintAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, about 570 ml. After skimming and a twenty-minute simmer you will have somewhat less than that, which the small quantity and the basin-rewarming suggest was meant as one or two servings for an invalid.
- Reheating in the basinStanding the basin in boiling water rather than reheating in a pan keeps the broth from boiling again and going greasy or cloudy. A heatproof bowl over simmering water does the same thing.
- SeasoningSalt with restraint at the start and correct at the end; a twenty-minute broth reduces unpredictably, and the small onion and herbs are meant to stay in the background.
- The price note1s. per pound is a Victorian retail figure and has no bearing on what the cut costs now.
Mutton broth was one of the standard sickroom foods of the nineteenth century, prescribed for convalescents, nursing mothers and children, and household manuals of the period give considerable space to making it fat-free and bland - hence the insistence on removing every particle of fat and on rewarming over water rather than direct heat. The "quickly made" version answers the case of a household with an invalid that could not wait on the stockpot; cold mutton fat was also commonly held to sit badly on a weak stomach.