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Lamb Broth
2 pounds neck of lamb 1 teaspoon salt 1 quart cold water Clean the meat with a damp cloth; remove the skin and fat; cut the meat into small pieces and hack or separate the bones. Put bones and meat into a saucepan; add cold water; let stand one hour; then heat gradually and let it cook below the boiling point for two hours. Strain through a sieve; season and serve, adding a little boiled rice if desired.
A plain invalid broth of the kind found in every early twentieth-century household manual. The method is sound; only a few details need translating.
- The hinge: never let it boil"Below the boiling point" means a bare shiver at the surface, roughly 180-190F. A rolling boil emulsifies the fat and drives albumin into the liquid, turning a clear amber broth cloudy and greasy.
- The cold soakThe hour of standing in cold water is deliberate: cold-water extraction draws soluble protein and flavour out of the meat before heat sets it. The gain from a single hour is probably modest, but it costs nothing.
- Neck of lambLamb neck is sold as whole neck, neck fillet or neck slices; slices on the bone are ideal here. If the butcher will not hack the bones, ask for it cut across into rounds, or substitute a similar weight of bone-in shoulder.
- Salt timingOne teaspoon in a quart is modest, and the liquid reduces somewhat over two hours. The recipe tells you to season again after straining, and that is where the real adjustment happens.
- YieldYou will get somewhat less than the starting quart, depending on how wide the pan is and whether it is covered — call it two to three cups. Scale up if you want it as a family soup.
- Fat and clarityChill the strained broth and lift the solid fat from the surface, then reheat. Straining through a fine sieve lined with damp cheesecloth gives a clearer result than a sieve alone.
- The rice, and the meatAdd rice already boiled and drained, as directed, so its starch does not cloud the liquid. The cooked meat picked from the neck is perfectly good chopped fine and returned to the cup or used separately.
- Keeping itNothing here preserves the broth. Refrigerate within two hours and use within three days, or freeze; broth is a low-acid food and is not a candidate for water-bath canning.
Lamb broth belongs to the long tradition of "invalid cookery" — the chapter of light, easily digested dishes that nineteenth- and early twentieth-century cookbooks supplied for the sick, the convalescent and the very young, at a time when nursing was done at home and thin meat broths were considered nourishment in their own right. The method shares the logic of classical clear-broth making — cold water start, long soak, gentle extraction well under the boil — applied to one of the cheapest cuts on the carcass.