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Scotch Soup
Take four pounds of the shin of beef or knuckle of veal. Put it into a stewpan, pour over it as much cold water as will cover it, add four ounces of pearl barley, and let all simmer gently together for an hour. Remove the scum carefully as it rises, and when no more appears, throw in a bunch of parsley, a sprig of thyme, a bay-leaf, half a dozen outer sticks of celery two onions, two large turnips cut into dice, and a little pepper and salt. Add gradually another quart of water, and simmer the soup again until the vegetables are tender. Take up the meat, and serve it on a separate dish. Serve the soup without straining and as hot as possible. A fowl is occasionally stewed in the soup, and served with it. Time, about two and a half hours. Probable cost, 3s. 6d. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A plain barley broth of the Scotch broth family, built to yield two courses from one pot: the soup, and the boiled meat served separately. Nothing here is difficult, but the proportions and the handling of the barley repay attention.
- The hinge: start in cold water and skim before seasoningThe barley goes in at the beginning with cold water so the proteins rise slowly and can be lifted off as grey scum. Once the herbs and vegetables are in, skimming is much harder without pulling them out, which may be why the recipe orders the two stages this way.
- Quantities and yieldFour pounds of shin is about 1.8 kg, and four ounces of pearl barley is roughly 115 g, a little over half a cup. Water is loose: enough to cover at the start, plus a quart -- an imperial quart, about 1.1 litres -- added gradually, which should give perhaps three to four litres of finished soup for six to eight.
- Shin and knuckle are still the right cutsBoth are collagen-heavy and full of bone, which is the whole point. Ask for shin cut across the bone in thick rounds, or a sawn veal knuckle. Boneless stewing beef will make a thinner, duller broth.
- Two and a half hours is optimistic for shinSimmered gently, a four-pound shin usually wants three hours or more before it is genuinely tender enough to carve and serve as a dish in its own right. Judge by the meat, not the clock, and keep the pot at a bare tremble; a rolling boil clouds the broth and shreds the meat.
- Pearl barley thickens as it sitsIt will keep swelling and will absorb liquid overnight, so a soup that is right at the table becomes porridge in the refrigerator. Hold back some stock, or thin with water when reheating.
- "Outer sticks of celery"The tough green ribs from the outside of the head. The pale heart was commonly sent raw to the table and the coarser outer ribs went to the pot. Six of them is a generous handful, roughly a head's worth of outer ribs.
- TurnipsIn an English book of this period 'turnip' would usually mean the white turnip rather than the swede, though in Scotland the word often means swede. Cut in dice they go in with the other vegetables and will be soft in well under an hour; add them later than the onions if you want them to hold their shape.
- Season at the end as wellThe recipe salts early, before another quart of water goes in and before long reduction. Taste and correct once the meat comes out, and add a good deal of chopped parsley then, since the bunch simmered in from the start will have given up everything it has.
- The optional fowlA whole chicken stewed alongside will be done well before the shin, so put it in for the last hour or so and lift it out to rest while the beef finishes.
Scotch broth in its many forms is the classic barley-and-root soup of Scottish kitchens, and one feature often said to characterise it is the one this version keeps: it is not strained. Where French practice clarified stock into consomm ic tradition served the vegetables, the barley and the cooking liquid all together, with the boiled meat carried in on its own dish as the joint that followed. That two-in-one economy is the point of the dish: one cut of shin feeds a table twice. The costing is a period marker in itself: 3s. 6d. for a dinner for eight was quoted at a time when such books commonly priced dishes so a mistress could check the household books, and shin and knuckle were the cheap, gelatinous cuts that made the arithmetic work.