Mutton Broth
3 lbs. mutton 2 qts. cold water 1 teaspoon salt Few grains pepper 1/4 cup barley Wash and soak barley over night. Wipe meat, remove skin and fat, and cut in pieces. Put in kettle with bones and seasonings and cover with cold water. Bring to boiling point and simmer until meat is tender,--strain. Remove fat. Reheat and add barley, and cook until barley is tender.
A plain nineteenth-century broth that depends almost entirely on patience and on skimming. Two points matter: the meat must never come to a rolling boil, and the barley goes in only after the fat has been lifted off.
- The muttonMutton means sheep past a year old, usually two or more, and is rarely sold in American supermarkets. Lamb shoulder or neck with the bone in works, though the broth will be milder and sweeter; halal butchers are the likeliest source for true mutton.
- Water quantitiesThe ingredient list says 2 quarts, then the method says "cover with cold water." Use the 2 quarts and top up only if the meat becomes exposed during the long simmer.
- Simmer, don't boilBring it just to the boiling point and then hold it at a bare tremble. A hard boil emulsifies the fat into the liquid and clouds the broth; the recipe's straining and defatting steps go easier for it.
- TimingExpect roughly 1.5 to 2.5 hours for bone-in mutton or lamb shoulder to go tender. Soaked pearl barley then wants perhaps 25 to 40 minutes; hulled barley takes longer.
- Soaking the barleyThe overnight soak was standard for the coarser barley of the period. Modern pearl barley needs no soak, but soaking still shortens cooking and gives a cleaner broth since you discard the starchy water.
- Removing the fatEasiest done cold. Strain the broth, chill it several hours, and lift the solid cap off in one piece rather than chasing droplets with a spoon.
- SeasoningOne teaspoon of salt for 2 quarts is thin by current taste. Season again after the barley has cooked.
- YieldAbout 6 to 7 cups of broth, four servings. The strained meat is worth returning to the pot in shreds, or using in a hash or shepherd's pie.
Mutton broth with barley is a long-established dish in the British and Irish repertoire, and it crossed to American kitchens with Scottish and northern English immigrants as the plainer cousin of Scotch broth. It appears in the cookbooks of the period because mutton broth was the standard invalid and convalescent food of the era, prescribed for the sick precisely because it was strained clear and defatted. Mutton itself was still ordinary market meat in 1900; its near-disappearance from American butcher counters over the following decades is why this recipe now reads as an antique.