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Mutton Broth
2 lbs. neck of mutton 2 cups of cold water Cut the meat into small pieces, soak in water for 1 hour, then simmer for 3 hours, strain and remove all fat. 3 tbsp. of rice may be boiled and served with the strained broth.
An invalid-cookery broth, deliberately plain: no salt, no aromatics, nothing to tax a weak stomach. A few points make it work on a modern stove.
- The water is barely enoughTwo cups will not cover 2 lb of bone-in neck, and three hours of simmering will boil most of it away. Use enough water to cover the meat by an inch in a small heavy pan with a tight lid, and check partway through; the original figure assumes a slow range-top and a well-fitting pot.
- The cold soak mattersStarting in cold water and letting the meat stand an hour draws out soluble protein and blood, which is the usual explanation for this broth's pale colour and mild flavour. Going straight to heat tends to give a less clear result.
- Never let it boil"Simmer" here means bare tremble, around 180-190F. A rolling boil emulsifies the fat back into the liquid, and the whole point of the recipe is a broth you can degrease completely.
- Neck of muttonMutton means sheep over about two years old, sold now mostly through halal and specialist butchers. Lamb neck or scrag end is the everyday substitute; it will be milder and slightly sweeter, and will be tender in two hours rather than three.
- Removing the fatSkimming hot broth never gets it all. Chill the strained liquid several hours or overnight and lift the solid cap off in one piece.
- The riceThe recipe has it boiled and then served with the strained broth, which keeps the starch from clouding the liquid. Three tablespoons of raw rice yields something over half a cup cooked.
- SeasoningThe recipe as printed calls for no salt at all. For ordinary eating, salt at the end, after degreasing, when the volume is settled.
- YieldFollowing the original two cups of water, expect somewhere between one and two cups of finished broth; more if you top the pan up as suggested above. One or two servings.
Nearly every general cookbook of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries carried a section like this one, headed "Sick Room" or "Invalid Cookery," and mutton broth was its backbone. Before antibiotics, convalescence from fevers, influenza and childbirth ran for weeks, and nursing the patient was household work rather than hospital work; the cook was expected to produce a series of thin, unseasoned, easily digested liquids on a graduated scale, from beef tea and barley water up through broths to a coddled egg. The neck was used because it was cheap and full of the gelatine that made the broth feel nourishing. The rice is the first small step back toward solid food. Whether any of this did much good is another matter, but the belief that broth restores the sick is old and stubborn, and this recipe is the tail end of a tradition of medical cookery that stretches back through the eighteenth-century still-room books.