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Mutton Broth
Wipe two pounds neck of mutton; remove all fat and cut off skin; cut meat in small pieces. Put meat and bones in kettle; add four cups cold water, and simmer gently several hours; add salt to taste. Strain, let stand over night to cool; in the morning remove fat, reheat, and serve with two tablespoons cooked rice in broth.
A plain invalid's broth of the sort every household manual carried. It needs almost nothing from a modern cook except patience and one change to the overnight step.
- Cool it in the refrigeratorLeaving a pot of broth on the counter overnight sits it squarely in the temperature range where Clostridium perfringens multiplies. Cool the strained broth quickly in a shallow pan and refrigerate it; the fat still lifts off in a solid cap in the morning.
- Neck of muttonMutton is sheep over about two years old and is now sold mainly by halal butchers and some farm shops. Lamb neck, sold as scrag end or neck fillet, behaves the same way but tastes milder and needs less time.
- Timing"Several hours" means three to four at a bare tremble for neck on the bone. Lamb neck is done nearer two. A hard boil emulsifies the fat into the liquid and clouds it, which defeats the point of the overnight skim.
- Trim thoroughlyMutton fat sets hard and tastes strongly tallowy when reheated. The instruction to remove all fat and skin before cooking is doing real work here, not just tidying.
- Salt lateFour cups of water reducing over several hours concentrates whatever salt you add early. The recipe already puts the salt in after the simmer; taste and adjust again after reheating.
- YieldTwo pounds of neck and four cups of water gives roughly two to three cups of finished broth after reduction and skimming. The recipe does not state a number of servings.
- The riceThe two tablespoons of cooked rice go in at serving, not into the simmering pot. Added earlier the rice breaks down and thickens the liquid to a starchy gruel.
Mutton broth was standard sickroom food in Anglo-American households well into the twentieth century, prescribed for convalescents, nursing mothers and children recovering from fever. Its appearance in a book published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, is a reminder that these promotional cookbooks were built as complete household references rather than single-subject collections: a firm selling cocoa still needed to supply the invalid cookery, the chafing-dish suppers and the plain family dinners its readers expected.