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CHAPTER XXXVI: Broth
Barley Broth (Scotch recipe). 1 neck mutton, 3 carrots, 3 turnips, 2 onions, 1 celery head, 4 tablespoonfuls barley, 2 quarts water.
Soak the mutton in water an hour; cut off the scrag, and put it into a stewpot with 2 quarts water; as soon as it boils, skim it well; let it simmer for an hour and a half, then take the best end of the mutton, divide in cutlets, trim off some of the fat, and add as many to the soup as you wish; skim the moment the fresh meat boils up, and every quarter of an hour after; then add the carrots, onions, turnips, celery, cut, but not too small; and barley previously washed in cold water. The broth should stew for three hours before serving; some chopped parsley may be added, and season to taste.
MRS. CURTIS'S COOKBOOK Mutton Broth (Irish recipe). 2½ pounds mutton, 1 quart water, 3 turnips, 3 carrots, 2 leeks or onions, 3 mutton chops, 1 head lettuce, 3 spoonfuls barley.
Boil the mutton with a little barley, slowly, for three or four hours; strain it off and remove the fat; add turnips, carrots, and leeks, cut fine; put them, with mutton chops, into the broth, and boil till tender; when nearly done, add some lettuce, previously blanched and drained; boil for ten minutes, season with salt, and serve. The vegetables should be quite thick in the broth, but cut very small.
Two versions of the same idea: mutton simmered long enough to make its own stock, then vegetables and barley cooked in it. Both are workable as written, with a few translations.
- Neck of mutton, scrag and best endThe neck runs from the scrag (the bony, sinewy top, used here for the stock) to the best end (the rib chops). Ask a butcher for a whole lamb or mutton neck, bone in, about 3-4 lb; failing that, use 2 lb neck fillet or shoulder for the long simmer and 4-6 small chops for the second stage.
- Mutton versus lambMutton is sheep over a year old, stronger in flavour and much tougher, which is what justifies three to four hours of simmering. Lamb from a supermarket will be tender in half that time, so add the chops later and check them rather than following the clock.
- Water and reductionTwo quarts over three hours or more of open simmering will lose a good deal of volume (the Scotch recipe's timings are ambiguous as to whether the three hours includes the first hour and a half or follows it). Keep the pot at a bare tremble with the lid ajar and top up with hot water to keep the meat covered, or you will finish with a stew rather than a broth.
- The skimming is the pointBoth recipes make a fuss of skimming, and it is the difference between clear broth and grey, muddy broth. Skim at the first boil and again each time fresh meat goes in; the fat that rises later is easiest removed by chilling the broth and lifting the cap off.
- BarleyFour tablespoons is a quarter cup. Pearl barley is what these recipes assume and needs about 45-60 minutes; pot or hulled barley takes considerably longer and will need to go in at the start. Barley keeps swelling in the pot, so a broth held overnight will want thinning.
- Blanching the lettuceIn the Irish version the lettuce is dropped in boiling water briefly, drained, then added at the end; the recipe does not say why, though blanching wilts it and takes off any bitterness. A firm cos or romaine, shredded, is the right sort; soft modern butterhead collapses to nothing.
- "A celery head"A whole bunch of celery, not a single rib. Use three or four ribs plus the leafy tops, which carry most of the flavour.
- Seasoning and yieldNeither recipe salts until late, which is correct when the liquid is reducing. The Scotch recipe, on two quarts, makes roughly 6 servings as a main course; the Irish, on one quart, correspondingly fewer - more in either case as a first course. Chopped parsley at the end is not decoration here; it lifts a broth that is otherwise all root vegetable and fat.
Scotch broth of this kind is a long-established British one-pot dish, and its logic is economic: the cheap bony end of the neck makes the stock, the good end supplies the meat, and barley - a grain that grew more reliably than wheat in Scotland - both thickens the pot and stretches it. The Irish version alongside it is the same construction with leeks and a head of lettuce, the latter a reminder that lettuce was also used as a cooked vegetable in European kitchens. Broths were treated as basic domestic knowledge, invalid food and family food at once, and the reader was still expected to buy a neck of mutton by the piece and know what to do with both ends of it.