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Mutton Broth with the Meat In
227. Cut a neck of mutton into chops, taking off every bit of fat four hours before dinner; put it in the stewpan, and pour it nearly full of boiling water; cut in slices four carrots and six small turnips, and put in the pan at the same time; let it simmer and boil till dinner-time; flavour with salt, and skim off the fat. Some people add an ounce or two of rice with the vegetables.
A plain boiled-mutton dinner in one pot: the broth and the meat are served together, so the seasoning and the fat-skimming are the whole of the technique. Little here has changed except the availability of mutton and our tolerance for four-hour vegetables.
- Neck of muttonA whole neck sawn across into chops — what a butcher now sells as neck slices or scrag end. True mutton (sheep over two years) is a special order in most places; lamb neck works and will be tender in about 90 minutes rather than four hours.
- Trimming the fatThe instruction to take off every bit of fat matters more than it looks. Mutton fat is strongly flavoured and sets hard on the surface of the broth; trim it before cooking and skim again at the end, or chill the pot and lift the cap off.
- Boiling waterCovering the meat with boiling rather than cold water was held to set the surface and keep more of the flavour in the meat. If you want a stronger broth and drier meat, start from cold instead.
- Simmer, do not boil"Let it simmer and boil" should be read as a bare tremble. A rolling boil emulsifies the remaining fat into the liquid and turns the broth cloudy and greasy, and it toughens the meat before it turns tender.
- The vegetablesFour carrots and six small turnips going in at the start will be entirely collapsed after four hours, which at least has the effect of thickening and sweetening the broth. For vegetables you can still see, hold back half and add them 25 minutes before serving.
- RiceAn ounce or two is roughly 2 to 4 tablespoons. Added at the start it will disintegrate into the liquid and body it up; add it 20 minutes from the end if you want distinct grains. Pearl barley was also common in mutton broths of the period.
- SeasoningSalt only, in the original, and added late. Salt at the end, once the liquid has reduced, or it will be over-seasoned. Pepper and a handful of chopped parsley at the table are both period-appropriate.
- YieldA whole neck is roughly 3 to 4 lb and feeds four to six as a main course, meat and broth in the same bowl with bread.
Broth made with the meat left in was a common everyday form of mutton cookery in nineteenth-century Britain — one pot, one fire, and long slow cooking. The neck was among the cheapest cuts, bony and gelatinous, and it rewards exactly this treatment: long slow liquid, and vegetables cooked to nothing to give the broth substance. The instruction to start it four hours before dinner is a reminder that the kitchen range burned all day whether or not anything was cooking on it. Recipes of this kind sit alongside the more elaborate French-influenced entrées in the same books, which gathered plain family dinners as well as made dishes.