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SCOTCH BROTH (Genuine Scotch Recipe)
Take about three pounds of fresh beef. The shin or hock, or the thick flank, or any similar piece, will answer excellently. Procure also a tea-cupful of pearl barley, a cabbage, three leeks, one large turnip, one large carrot, and a quarter of a peck of peas, fresh or dried. When there is any difficulty in procuring the peas, they are frequently omitted. If dried peas are used, they must be soaked overnight. Put the barley into a stewpan with six quarts of cold water. Whilst this is heating prepare the vegetables. Shred the cabbage finely and cut the leeks and turnip into small dice, and throw them into cold water till they are wanted. Before using, drain them. Cleanse the carrot, then scrape or grate it to pulp; and do not put any cold water upon it after it is grated, as that would cause it to lose its flavour. When the water boils, put into it all the vegetables, with the beef and a little pepper and salt, and simmer the broth very gently till the beef is tender. If the meat is done enough before it is needed, it should be taken out for awhile and put back in time to heat again. Particular care should be taken to skim the broth carefully. Serve the beef on a separate dish, and send the broth with the vegetables and barley to table in a tureen. Very good broth may be made with mutton or lamb, as well as beef. It is excellent the second day. Time to simmer the broth, about four hours. Probable cost, 3s. 4d. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A shin-of-beef broth built on barley, thickened by nothing but long simmering and grated carrot. Two things need adjusting: the vegetable timing and the quantity of peas.
- The hinge: don't add all the vegetables at onceFour hours of simmering will reduce shredded cabbage and diced leek to grey threads. Give the barley, beef, turnip, carrot and soaked peas the long haul, and add the cabbage and leeks in the last 20 to 30 minutes so they keep some body and colour.
- A teacupful of barleyA teacupful in Victorian cookery is usually reckoned at rather less than a modern cup — read it as roughly 3/4 cup, about 5 oz (150 g) of pearl barley. That is a modest amount for six quarts of liquid; adding much more will give a noticeably thicker, more porridge-like broth.
- A quarter of a peck of peasA peck is 8 dry quarts, so a quarter peck is 2 quarts — a large amount, and the book does not say whether that is in the pod or shelled. Read it as about 1 lb (450 g) of shelled fresh peas or 8 oz (225 g) of dried split peas, and treat the original figure as generous rather than exact.
- Cut of meatShin, hock and thick flank are all collagen-rich cuts that need the full four hours. Modern shin is usually sold sliced across the bone as "beef shin" or osso-buco style; bone-in is better here, since the marrow enriches the broth.
- Six quarts is a big potSix imperial quarts is about 6.8 litres of water before any evaporation. Use a stockpot of at least 8 quarts (9 litres) capacity and keep the lid ajar; a bare simmer, not a boil, or the broth clouds.
- Skimming, and the cold-water startStarting the beef in water already at the boil sets the surface proteins fast. Skim the grey foam off in the first 20 minutes and the broth stays clear; skim later and you are chasing fat, which is easier to lift off cold the next day.
- Grated carrotThe instruction not to rinse the grated carrot is sound — the sugars and aroma sit in the cut cells. Grated carrot will largely break down into the broth, though the barley does most of the thickening; if you want visible carrot as well, add some in dice near the end.
- Seasoning and yield"A little pepper and salt" at the start is only a foundation; salt properly at the end, once four hours of reduction has concentrated everything. Serves six to eight as written, and the note that it is better the second day is accurate — the barley continues to swell and the fat sets for easy removal.
Barley broth of this kind is the everyday soup of the Scottish kitchen rather than a set-piece dish, and the English name "Scotch broth" sits alongside older usage — in Scotland it was often simply "barley broth" or, when made with a boiling fowl or hough, named for its meat. Pearl barley was one of the grains of the northern arable belt long before wheat flour became cheap, and the combination of barley, dried peas, root vegetables and a cheap collagen-heavy cut is a frugal one: the beef leaves the pot as a separate dish, so a single piece of shin feeds a table twice. The recipe is flagged as a "genuine Scotch recipe" in a period when regional formulas were a selling point for household dictionaries, and the inclusion of a cash cost — 3s. 4d. — points at its intended reader, a middle-class housekeeper budgeting weekly meals. The remark that the peas are "frequently omitted" when hard to get is a reminder that an urban cook could not count on the same stock as a country one.