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Scotch Hotchpotch
Strain and remove all the fat from 2 quarts of good mutton or lamb broth, add 2 grated carrots and 3 sliced ones, enough young turnips, onion, parsley, and lettuce to make a quart of shred vegetables. Then take a pint of young green peas and a pint of cauliflower sprigs, and add to the stock with the exception of half of the peas. Stew all slowly for half an hour. Trim 2 pounds of lamb or mutton cutlets, and add with the remainder of the peas to the stock. Season with pepper, salt, and chopped parsley; simmer gently immediately.
A spring vegetable broth built on lamb, thickened only by grated carrot and the peas breaking down. It is a two-stage soup: hardy vegetables go in first, the cutlets and the reserved peas last.
- The hingeThe peas are deliberately split. Half cook down with the vegetables and give the broth body and sweetness; the reserved half go in with the meat at the end and are meant to stay whole and bright — though the recipe adds them with the cutlets, so they will cook for as long as the meat does.
- Cooking the cutletsTwo pounds of trimmed lamb cutlets need roughly 25 to 40 minutes of gentle simmering in the broth to become tender; the recipe's closing line ('simmer gently immediately') gives no time at all and appears garbled. Keep the pot barely trembling; a hard boil toughens the meat and clouds the broth.
- QuantitiesTwo quarts is 8 cups. The quart of shred vegetables is a quart by volume once cut, not a quart of whole ones, and it includes the carrots already called for, so the turnip, onion, parsley and lettuce need only make up the balance.
- Young turnipsThe recipe assumes small spring turnips, sweet enough to eat raw. Mature winter turnips are far more sulphurous; use small ones or substitute young white salad turnips, and peel thickly if all you can find is large.
- The lettuceShredded lettuce as a soup vegetable has largely fallen out of use but is worth keeping here. Use a firm cos or romaine, add it with the other shred vegetables, and expect it to melt into the broth rather than stay distinct.
- Fat and clarityChilling the broth overnight makes removing the fat trivial: it lifts off as a solid cap. Skim again after the cutlets have simmered, since lamb gives up a good deal more fat as it cooks.
- YieldWith two quarts of broth and two pounds of meat this serves six as a main course, one or two cutlets per bowl. It is a meal in a plate rather than a first course.
- SeasoningAdd the salt only after the cutlets have gone in and the broth has reduced a little, or a broth that tasted right at the start will finish over-salted. Reserve some of the chopped parsley to scatter raw at the table.