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Scotch Mutton Broth
Soak 6 pounds mutton in water for an hour, then place in stewpan with three quarts of water. As soon as it boils skim well, and then simmer for an hour and a half. Cut best end of mutton into cutlets, dividing it with 2 bones in each; take nearly all the fat off before putting it into the broth; skim the moment the meat boils, and every ten minutes afterward. Add 5 carrots, 5 turnips, and 2 onions, all cut up fine; then stir in 4 tablespoonfuls of Scotch barley, and salt to taste. Let all stew together for three and a half hours. About half an hour before sending it to the table put in a little chopped parsley.
A long-boiled Scottish broth in which the barley thickens the liquid and the meat is meant to fall from the bone. The instructions arrive out of sequence: the initial hour-and-a-half simmer is for the cheap bony end, and the cutlets from the best end go in afterward with the vegetables.
- The order of workThe instructions read out of sequence. The likeliest reading is that the first hour-and-a-half simmer is for the bonier, cheaper meat, with the trimmed cutlets, vegetables and barley going in for the second stage. Added at the very beginning, the good meat would be reduced to threads.
- Total timeAn hour and a half plus three and a half hours is five hours of simmering. Two to two and a half hours after the vegetables go in is enough for modern lamb; cut the carrots and turnips in half-inch dice rather than fine so they survive it.
- MuttonMutton is sheep over two years old, strongly flavoured and firm. Butchers rarely carry it; use hogget if you can find it, or 6 lb of lamb neck, shoulder and shanks on the bone. Lamb needs less time and gives a milder broth.
- Scotch barleyScotch or pot barley is hulled but not polished, so it holds its shape and takes longer than pearl barley. Pearl barley works and will break down more, thickening the broth further. Four tablespoons is 1/4 cup.
- StewpanA stewpan is simply a wide, straight-sided pan with a lid. Any 6-quart or larger heavy pot serves; three quarts of water plus 6 lb of meat needs the room.
- SkimmingSkimming every ten minutes is the point of the dish, not fussiness. Removing fat and scum as they rise is what gives a clear broth rather than a greasy one. Easier still: chill the finished broth and lift the solid fat off.
- SaltThe recipe salts along with the vegetables and barley. If you prefer, hold the salt back until the barley has swelled and the broth has reduced, since a long simmer concentrates the seasoning.
- YieldGenerously eight servings as a main course, with a cutlet and a share of vegetables in each bowl.
Scotch broth, or barley broth, is a mutton-and-barley pottage long associated with Scottish home cooking, and versions of it appear in the soup chapters of nineteenth-century English household manuals. Its logic is thrift: the bony end of the animal makes the liquid, root vegetables and barley make it filling, and the better cutlets are added only long enough to cook, so that one pot yields both soup and meat course. Barley rather than potato suggests an older habit -- barley was an everyday Scottish grain long before the potato arrived, and pot barley cooked in broth was a staple well before it became a garnish.