Mutton Soup, Good
INGREDIENTS for sufficient for 12 persons. A neck of mutton about 5 or 6 lbs., 3 carrots, 3 turnips, 2 onions, a large bunch of sweet herbs, including parsley; salt and pepper to taste; a little sherry, if liked; 3 quarts of water.
AVERAGE COST, 3s. 6d.
The Lay the ingredients in a covered pan before the fire and let them remain there the whole day, stirring occasionally. next day put the whole into a stewpan and place it on a brisk fire. When it commences to boil, take the pan off the fire and put it on one side to simmer until the meat is done. When ready for use, take out the meat, dish it up with carrots and turnips, and send it to table; strain the soup, let it cool, skim off all the fat, season, and thicken it with a tablespoonful, or rather more, of arrowroot; ; flavour with a little sherry, simmer for 5 minutes, and serve. TIME.-15 hours.
SEASONABLE at any time. "Now good digestion wait on appetite, And health on both." --MACBETH.
NASTURTIUMS, PICKLED.
ASTURTIUMS Pickled. (A very good Substitute for Capers.) INGREDIENTS. - To each pint of vinegar, 1 oz. of salt, peppercorns, nasturtiums. 6 Gather the nasturtium pods on a dry day and wipe them clean with a cloth; put them in a dry glass bottle, with vinegar, salt and pepper, in the above proportion. If there are not NASTURTIUMS. enough to fill a bottle, cork up what there are until there are some more fit; they may be added from day to day. Bung up the bottles and seal or rosin the tops. They NECTAR, WELSH. will be fit for use in 10 or 12 months; and the best way is to make them one season for the next.
SEASONABLE. - Look for nasturtium-pods from the end of July to the end of August.
The interest here is the method rather than the ingredients: a whole raw neck of mutton and its vegetables are held in a covered pan in the warmth of the hearth for an entire day before any cooking begins. That step is the reason the recipe cannot be followed now, and the notes below explain the specifics.
- Why the overnight step failsRaw mutton and root vegetables sitting covered in front of a fire spend somewhere between roughly 20C and 45C for twelve hours or more — the range in which Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus cereus and Clostridium perfringens multiply fastest. Modern practice allows meat no more than two hours in that range in total.
- Boiling afterwards does not fix itThe later simmer will kill the bacteria themselves, but the enterotoxin produced by S. aureus and the emetic toxin of B. cereus both survive prolonged boiling. A soup made this way can be sterile and still make people ill, which is why no amount of adjusted cooking time rescues the method. Use a current mutton or lamb broth recipe instead.
- The 15-hour timingThe stated time is almost entirely the fireside standing period, not cooking. The actual cookery is short: a single approach to the boil, then a gentle simmer until the meat leaves the bone.
- Neck of muttonA 5 to 6 lb neck of mutton — meat from a fully grown sheep, generally older than a year and often over two — is now a butcher's order rather than a supermarket item. Lamb neck is the usual substitute and is smaller, sweeter and much quicker to cook.
- Imperial measuresThree imperial quarts is about 3.4 litres, not 2.8; an imperial quart is 40 fl oz. The average cost of 3s. 6d. is pre-decimal shillings and pence, given for a dish meant to feed twelve.
- Arrowroot as thickenerA tablespoon of arrowroot slaked in cold liquid and stirred into the hot, degreased broth gives a clear, glossy body rather than the cloudiness of a flour roux. It thins again if held at a hard boil, which may be why the recipe asks for only five minutes' simmering.
- Two dishes from one potBeeton treats this as boiled mutton with vegetables served first, the strained and thickened liquor following as soup.
Beeton's household soups lean heavily on the cheaper joints, and neck of mutton was among the cheapest: bony, fatty, full of connective tissue, and worthless unless cooked long and slow. The instruction to leave the covered pan "before the fire" the whole day belongs to a kitchen with a coal range or open hearth burning continuously from morning to night — a warm, unattended spot was free heat. The arrowroot and the optional sherry mark the dish as a genteel one rather than plain broth; arrowroot, imported chiefly from the West Indies, was prized in nineteenth-century English cookery for invalid and convalescent dishes because it produced a clear thickening thought to be gentler on the stomach than wheat flour.