Home › The Principles of Cookery › Mutton Stock for Soup
Mutton Stock for Soup
For a rich soup allow a pound of meat to a pint of water, but do not use mutton only; a mixture of meats will make the best soup. Four pounds of mutton, with the same weight of beef, or rather less of veal, necks and feet of poultry, bones of undressed fowls, and of a calf's head, with a layer of lean ham, or half a pound of Jewish smoked beef, laid over the bottom of an iron soup kettle, and a pint or a pint and a half of water to each pound of meat, will make very excellent stock, with the addition of vegetables. Boil the meat and bones slowly, and skim carefully; add to each gallon, when boiling, one ounce and a half of salt, three onions, each with four cloves, three carrots, three turnips, two heads of celery, a bunch of parsley and thyme, a blade of mace, and a dozen white peppercorns; strain for use. Time to simmer, six hours.
This is a foundation stock rather than a finished soup, written for a household that expected to make gallons at a time. Scaled down and read carefully, it still produces the best mutton-based stock you are likely to taste.
- Scale it down firstAs written this is eight pounds of meat plus bones and eight to twelve pints of water — a 12-quart pot at minimum. Quartering it (1 lb mutton, 1 lb beef, a few chicken wings or backs, 2 to 3 pints water) fits a standard stockpot and yields around a quart of strained stock once it has reduced.
- The ratio is the recipeA pound of meat to a pint of water is the whole point; the vegetables and spices are trimming. If you thin the ratio you get broth, not the gelatinous stock this is aiming at, so keep the water at or just above the level of the solids and top up only if it drops.
- Mutton, and what to use insteadTrue mutton — sheep over two years — has the depth this recipe relies on and is sold mainly by halal butchers and some farm suppliers. Lamb neck or shoulder will substitute, but the stock will be milder and sweeter.
- Jewish smoked beefThis means kosher smoked beef, in practice a cured beef cut such as brisket, standing in for pork products. Half a pound of unsliced pastrami, smoked beef brisket, or a piece of lean bacon or prosciutto end all do the same job: a smoky, salty base layer under the fresh meat.
- Calf's head and poultry feetBoth are collagen sources, there to make the stock set. Order chicken feet from a Chinese or Latin grocer, or substitute a split veal knuckle or a pound of pig's trotters. Skip them and the stock will taste right but will be noticeably less gelatinous.
- A blade of maceA single piece of the dried aril, the lacy covering of the nutmeg seed. About a quarter teaspoon of ground mace stands in, added late so it does not turn dusty.
- Hold back on the saltAn ounce and a half per gallon is something over two tablespoons. With cured beef already in the pot, salt lightly now and correct in the finished soup.
- Simmer, and never boil"Boil the meat and bones slowly" means a bare tremble, a few bubbles breaking at the edge. A rolling boil emulsifies the fat and clouds the pot, which is why the recipe also tells you to skim carefully.
- Time and finishingSix hours is right for this quantity of meat and bone. Strain through a fine sieve or cloth, chill overnight, and lift the solidified fat off the top; the fat is worth keeping for frying. Cool the stock quickly in a shallow pan before refrigerating, and use within four days or freeze.
Stock recipes like this one belong to the era when a soup kettle sat at the back of the range as a matter of course, and the household's meat scraps, poultry trimmings and bones went into it rather than the bin. Mutton was a mainstay of nineteenth-century British cookery, and its stock had a reputation for being strong-flavoured, which may be why the recipe warns against using mutton alone and calls for beef, veal and poultry alongside it. The offer of lean ham or "Jewish smoked beef" as a base layer suggests that cured beef from Jewish butchers was familiar enough to be named without further explanation. Cured beef of this general type is often linked to the ancestry of pastrami.