Mutton Stock
Select neck of mutton for this purpose. Wash in cold water, cut into small pieces and put into soup kettle with two quarts of cold water. When the boiling point is reached, skim and then let simmer for one and one-half hours. Add an onion, a turnip, a carrot, and several stalks of celery, all cut in small pieces and season with pepper and parsley. Simmer an hour longer, strain, and add salt and rice or barley, as preferred.
A plain two-stage broth: meat first, vegetables second, so nothing is overcooked into mush. The original assumes you know what a neck of mutton weighs and how much barley to add, so the gaps are worth filling.
- Mutton and its substituteMutton is meat from a mature sheep (usually given as over one, or over two, years old), strong-flavoured and rarely sold in American markets now. Lamb neck or bone-in shoulder is the practical stand-in, though the broth will be milder.
- How much meatNo weight is given. Two quarts of water suits about 2 to 2 1/2 lb of neck, cut through the bone into two-inch pieces by the butcher; the bones matter as much as the meat for body.
- Start cold, and skimThe cold-water start is the point of the method. Proteins and blood coagulate slowly and rise as grey scum, which is best lifted off early, at a bare simmer, before it breaks up and clouds the stock.
- Simmer, never boil"Simmer" here means an occasional lazy bubble, around 185-195F. A rolling boil emulsifies mutton fat into the liquid and gives a greasy, muddy broth that no amount of straining will fix.
- Salt last, and whySalt goes in after straining because two and a half hours of reduction concentrates whatever you add at the start. Seasoning the finished volume is the only way to judge it.
- DegreaseMutton and lamb fat set hard and taste waxy when cool. Chill the strained stock and lift the cap off in one piece, or blot the surface with paper if using it at once.
- Rice or barleyQuantities are left to the cook. Allow about 1/3 cup pearl barley or 1/4 cup rice per quart of finished stock; barley wants 35-45 minutes, rice 15-18, and both will keep thickening as the soup stands.
- YieldTwo quarts of water will reduce over two and a half hours' simmering, perhaps to something like a quart and a half depending on how closely the pot is covered -- enough for about four as a first course. The picked meat from the neck is worth returning to the pot rather than discarding with the bones.
The Butterick Cook Book (1911) came from the pattern and magazine house founded by Ebenezer Butterick; the Delineator, published by the Butterick company (Butterick himself died in 1903), sold dressmaking to American households and then sold them everything else that went with keeping one, and the book's recipes are aimed at a cook working without a kitchen staff. Neck of mutton was among the cheapest cuts on the sheep and one much used for broth, being largely bone, connective tissue and slow-yielding gelatin, and it appears in a whole family of British and Irish dishes from Scotch broth to Lancashire hotpot. The two-stage timing here, meat alone for ninety minutes and the roots only for the last hour, is common in nineteenth-century stockmaking, meant to keep carrot and turnip from disintegrating into the strained liquid. That the book treats mutton stock as a pantry staple rather than a dish is itself a period marker: mutton was still a familiar meat in 1911 America, though already being displaced by younger, milder lamb, and it had largely gone from the market by mid-century.