Home › Lamb And Mutton › Scotch Broth
Scotch Broth
Wipe three pounds mutton cut from fore-quarter. Cut lean meat in one-inch cubes, put in kettle, cover with three pints cold water, bring quickly to boiling-point, skim, and add one-half cup barley which has been soaked in cold water over night; simmer one and one-half hours, or until meat is tender. Put bones in a second kettle, cover with cold water, heat slowly to boiling-point, skim, and boil one and one-half hours. Strain water from bones and add to meat. Fry five minutes in two tablespoons butter, one-fourth cup each of carrot, turnip, onion, and celery, cut in one-half inch dice, add to soup with salt and pepper to taste, and cook until vegetables are soft. Thicken with two tablespoons each of butter and flour cooked together. Add one-half tablespoon finely chopped parsley just before serving. Rice may be used in place of barley.
Lambs' Kidneys I Soak, pare, and cut in slices six kidneys, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Melt two tablespoons butter in hot frying-pan, put in kidneys, and cook five minutes; dredge thoroughly with flour, and add two-thirds cup boiling water or hot Brown Stock. Cook five minutes, add more salt and pepper if needed. Lemon juice, onion juice, or Madeira wine may be used for additional flavor. Kidneys must be cooked a short time, or for several hours; they are tender after a few minutes' cooking, but soon toughen, and need hours of cooking to again make them tender.
Two recipes have run together on this page: the broth itself, and a short entry for lambs' kidneys that follows it. Both are workable, though the broth's two-kettle method assumes a coal range with several burners going at once.
- The two kettlesMeat and barley cook in one pot, bones in another for the same hour and a half, and the strained bone liquor is then added to the meat before the vegetables go in. There is no harm in starting the bones first in a single large pot, lifting them out after 90 minutes, then adding the cubed meat and barley to the same liquid.
- MeasuresThree pints is 6 cups. The vegetable quantities, a quarter cup each of diced carrot, turnip, onion and celery, come to about a cup total, which is modest for the volume of liquid; double it if you want a thicker, more vegetable-forward broth.
- Mutton and the forequarterMutton means sheep over a year old, with a far stronger flavour than lamb, and it is a special-order item in most places now. Lamb shoulder or neck is the usual substitute; it will be tender closer to an hour than to 90 minutes, so test rather than trust the clock.
- TurnipIn Scotland the "neep" of a broth is usually the yellow swede, sold as rutabaga in the United States, though an American book of this date may equally mean the white turnip. Either works; swede gives a sweeter result.
- Soaking the barleyModern pearl barley needs no soak and will soften within the simmering time; if you skip the soak, expect the broth to thicken more as the barley releases starch.
- The thickening is optionalTwo tablespoons each of butter and flour cooked together is a roux stirred in at the end. Barley already thickens the pot considerably, and many traditional Scottish versions use no flour at all. Taste before deciding.
- SkimmingBringing the meat pot "quickly to boiling-point" is deliberate: it drives the scum to the surface where it can be lifted off. Once skimmed, drop the heat to a bare simmer, or the meat will tighten and the broth will cloud.
- YieldRoughly 2 quarts, though the water for the bones is unmeasured, so the final volume will vary; serves four to six as a first course.
- The kidneys, and the rule attached to themThe closing note is the important part of that entry: kidneys are tender after a few minutes, then toughen, and only hours of stewing brings them back. The recipe's total is about ten minutes -- five in butter, five more after the liquid goes in -- and that is the whole window. Soak them in cold water and pare them before slicing.
Scotch broth is a barley-and-mutton pot long associated with Scotland, eaten wherever sheep and barley were both to hand. Fannie Farmer's placing of it under Lamb and Mutton rather than among the soups is telling: this is a way of using the cheap, bony forequarter, and the recipe's careful separation of lean meat from bones reflects a household economy in which nothing with marrow in it was thrown out. The barley does double duty as thickener and filler, which is why the added roux at the end sits oddly with the Scottish original. The instruction that rice may be used instead is a concession to what an American pantry was likely to hold.