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Mutton Broth, Scotch Summer
Boil four pounds of lean mutton in four quarts of water, stir into it eight ounces of Scotch barley. Keep it well mixed until the water boils, and skim the surface carefully while simmering as fast as the scum rises. Cut up a couple of carrots, a turnip, and an onion; add these, with a quart or more of green peas, a few sprigs of parsley, and a dessert-spoonful of pepper and salt, mixed. The vegetables should not be allowed to boil a longer time than is required to cook them. Scotch broth may be made of beef or veal. Time, two hours and a half altogether. Sufficient for three quarts.
A straightforward barley broth that needs only a few translations and one adjustment of sequence.
- The hinge: stagger the vegetablesThe instruction not to overboil the vegetables is the whole point, but the recipe lists them together. Add carrot, turnip and onion for the last 30-40 minutes, and the peas and parsley in the final 5-10 minutes so they stay green and sweet.
- Scotch barleyThis is generally taken to be pot barley — the hulled whole grain, coarser than pearl barley and slower to soften. Pearl barley works and is easier to find, but it thickens the broth more; 8 oz is a little over a cup, and you may want less if you like a thinner soup.
- Quantities in modern termsFour quarts is 16 cups of water; for four pounds of lean mutton, neck, shoulder or shank are suitable choices, though the recipe does not specify bone-in. A dessertspoonful is about two teaspoons — of pepper and salt mixed, so perhaps a teaspoon and a half of salt and a half teaspoon of pepper. Season at the end instead and adjust to taste.
- Mutton versus lambMutton is sheep over two years old, stronger in flavour and needing longer cooking. Most butchers sell lamb; lamb neck or shanks will be tender well inside the two and a half hours, so check at ninety minutes.
- SkimmingSkim in the first fifteen minutes, before the boil settles, or the scum breaks up and clouds the broth. Chilling the finished broth and lifting the set fat gives a cleaner result than skimming fat hot.
- PeasA quart of shelled green peas is a considerable amount — roughly 1¼ to 1½ lb, about 600 g of frozen peas. Frozen peas need only a few minutes and are closer to the fresh summer article than anything tinned.
- YieldThree quarts, or about twelve cups — six to eight as a main course with the meat pulled off the bone and returned to the pot. It thickens noticeably overnight as the barley swells; loosen with stock or water when reheating.
Scotch broth is a long-established British soup: mutton, barley and root vegetables simmered in one pot, a dish shaped by what a Scottish farm household had in quantity. The "summer" in this version may refer to the fresh green peas and young carrots and turnips, though the recipe itself does not say. It is a plain dish in construction — the barley does the thickening, so no roux, no stock made separately, no straining. The note that it "may be made of beef or veal" reflects how these Victorian compendia treated regional dishes: as a method to be varied rather than a fixed formula, though a Scots cook would likely have had opinions about substituting beef.