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Mutton Broth (This is best made)
This is best made with the scrag-ends of the necks chopped in pieces, then well washed and soaked in warm water to draw out the blood, and allowed to simmer for two hours.
A bare-bones invalid-cookery entry: no quantities, no seasoning, no yield. The method is sound, but everything else has to be supplied by the cook.
- Scrag endThe scrag is the thin, bony top of the neck of lamb or mutton, sold today as neck bones or scrag-end chops. Ask a butcher; supermarkets rarely rack it out. Around 2 lb of bony neck to 2 quarts of water gives a broth of reasonable strength.
- Mutton versus lambMutton is generally sheep over two years old, strongly flavoured and now sold mainly by halal and specialist butchers. Lamb neck substitutes directly and gives a milder broth.
- The soaking stepSoaking chopped bones in warm water draws out blood and gives a pale, clear broth rather than a grey one. Half an hour is enough; change the water once, then start the pot with fresh cold water so the extraction is gradual.
- Simmer, never boilThis is the hinge. A rolling boil emulsifies the mutton fat into the liquid and the broth turns cloudy and greasy, which defeats the whole purpose of a sickroom dish. Keep it at a bare tremble and skim the scum off in the first twenty minutes.
- Two hours is rightNeck bones give up their gelatine and flavour well inside two hours; longer mainly extracts more fat and a muttony heaviness. Strain as soon as the time is up rather than letting the meat sit in the liquid.
- DegreasingMutton fat sets hard and tastes tallowy when cool. Chill the strained broth and lift the cap off in one piece before reheating; a warm broth skimmed with a spoon will still be greasy.
- Seasoning and yieldThe original gives none, in keeping with bland invalid diets. Salt to taste at the end, and add a little rice, pearl barley or finely diced carrot if the broth is to be a meal. Expect roughly 6 cups from 2 quarts of water after two hours.
Invalid cookery was a standard department of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century household manuals, sitting alongside the chapters on pastry and preserves, because nursing the sick was domestic work rather than hospital work. Mutton broth was one of its staples: cheap, made from the least valuable cut on the carcass, and thought to be strengthening without taxing the digestion. The recipes in these sections are characteristically terse and unseasoned, since the doctrine of the day held that the sick should be given nourishment in its plainest form, and a strong flavour or a fatty surface was considered likely to turn the patient's stomach. The scrag end itself has never quite gone out of use in British cooking, where it survives in Lancashire hotpot and Irish stew.