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To Make Knuckle Broth
1211. Take ten or twelve knuckles from legs or shoulders of mutton, put them into water for two or three hours. Rub them with a little salt, and wash them well. Boil in four quarts of water two hours. Skim it clear, and add two ounces of hartshorn shavings, and the under crust of a penny loaf. Boil again till reduced to three pints; strain. When cold, remove the fat. Take half a pint as hot as you can drink it before you rise in the morning, the same quantity in bed at night. Make it fresh twice a week in winter, and three times in summer.
This is an invalid broth rather than a soup for the table: a plain, strong gelatine stock prescribed by the cupful morning and night. The method is sound, but two of its ingredients no longer sit on a shelf.
- What a knuckle isThe knuckle is the joint end of the leg or shoulder bone, sawn off by the butcher, with a little meat and a great deal of cartilage attached. Ten or twelve of them is a large quantity; ask for about 4 lb of sawn lamb or mutton leg and shoulder bones, and a shank or two will do the same work.
- Hartshorn shavingsRasped deer antler, sold by chemists and grocers as a gelatine source before commercial gelatine was cheap. Two ounces of unflavoured powdered gelatine is not an equivalent by weight; a split lamb trotter or a calf's foot added with the bones gives the same body far more reliably.
- The penny loaf crustThe bottom crust of a small plain loaf, added for body and a faint toasted flavour. A thick slice of stale white bread crust does the job; it will largely dissolve and is removed at the straining.
- Quantities and reductionFour quarts is 16 cups; three pints is 6 cups, a reduction of about five-eighths. The recipe gives two hours' boiling before the hartshorn and crust go in, then simply 'boil again till reduced', so time the second stage by volume, not the clock; keep it at a bare tremble rather than a rolling boil, which clouds the broth and emulsifies the fat back into it.
- Soaking and skimmingThe two- to three-hour soak in cold water draws out blood so the broth clears. Skim persistently in the first twenty minutes, when most of the scum rises; after that it is largely rendered fat, which the recipe deals with by chilling.
- SeasoningBeyond the salt used to scour the bones, nothing is added. That is deliberate in sickroom cookery, but if you are drinking it for pleasure it wants salt, a bay leaf and an onion.
- Keeping itThe instruction to remake it twice a week in winter and three times in summer assumes a cold larder. Refrigerated, this broth will set to a firm jelly and keep three or four days; reheat only the portion you want, to a full simmer, and discard the rest rather than topping it up.
- YieldThree pints, or six half-pint doses as the original intends. As stock for cooking it is enough for two or three dishes.