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Mutton Broth (Pound lean juicy mutton small)
1 pound lean, juicy mutton; 1 small onion; 1 quart water; 2 tablespoonfuls rice; 1 teaspoonful salt; 1/2 saltspoon pepper. A little cayenne or a very little curry powder if liked.
Rinse and wipe the mutton and cut into small pieces. If there are bones, crack them. Cover with the cold water and heat slowly. Add the onion and simmer until the meat is in rags. Strain, and when cool, remove every particle of fat. Return to the fire, add the salt and other seasoning, and, as soon as it boils, put in the rice, which has been well washed and soaked in cold water for half an hour. Simmer until the rice is tender, and serve with thin squares of delicately browned toast.
A little celery salt helps to overcome the muttony taste that is objectionable to some persons, but this is lessened by the addition of the onion, the flavor of which is lost in that of the mutton.
A plain invalid-cookery broth of the kind every household manual carried. The work is all in the slow extraction and the thorough defatting.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, so the pepper here is a scant 1/8 teaspoon. The salt at 1 teaspoon per quart is modest; season again at the end.
- Start cold, stay lowCovering the meat with cold water and bringing it up slowly is what pulls flavour into the liquid rather than sealing it into the meat. Keep it at a bare tremble, never a rolling boil, or the broth clouds.
- "In rags"This means the meat has collapsed into shreds and given up everything it has, roughly 1 1/2 to 2 hours for a pound of cut-up mutton with cracked bones. There is no fixed time in the original because it depends entirely on the cut.
- DefattingThe recipe has you cool the strained broth before skimming; cooling it right down makes the job easier, as the fat sets into a cap that can be lifted off. Mutton fat congeals hard and tastes tallowy when warm, which is part of what people mean by "muttony."
- Mutton todayMutton means the meat of a mature sheep, variously defined as over one or over two years old, and it is uncommon in supermarkets; halal and Caribbean butchers are the likelier sources. Lamb shoulder or neck works but gives a milder, sweeter broth.
- The riceTwo tablespoons of long-grain rice will take 15 to 18 minutes after the broth returns to a boil. The half-hour cold soak shortens that a little and is optional.
- YieldAbout a pint and a half of finished broth after straining and skimming, or two invalid-sized servings. Serve hot with the toast cut thin and dry.
Broths like this belong to the nineteenth-century tradition of "cookery for the sick," a section that appeared in a great many domestic manuals before hospital dietetics became a profession. Mutton broth was a common restorative for convalescents in Britain and America, valued because a small quantity of cheap meat could be reduced to something easily swallowed and, it was believed, easily assimilated. The frank aside about the "muttony taste" is notable in itself: the recipe openly offers onion, celery salt or a trace of curry powder to mask the flavour, though how far that reflects a broader shift from mature sheep towards young lamb is harder to pin down from a single recipe.