Scotch Broth
Scotch broth is substantial enough to be served for luncheon or when the main part of the dinner is light, and is made thus: From about two pounds of the neck of mutton remove all fat and bones. Place the bones in a stew-pan with two quarts of water, and let them simmer for one hour. Cut the lean. mutton into cubes, and put it in a stew-pan with one-half teacup, scant, of well-washed pearl barley and two tablespoons each of finely cut onion, carrot, turnip and celery. Strain the water from the bones upon this preparation, and place the pan where the broth will simmer for three hours. When the liquid begins to bubble, skim it, and add one-half teaspoon of pepper and a level tablespoon of salt. At the end of three hours put one tablespoon of butter in a saucepan, and set the latter on the fire. As soon as the butter becomes hot add one tablespoon of flour, and stir until the mixture is smooth and frothy. Stir this preparation into the broth, add a little minced parsley and cook for ten minutes longer.
A straightforward long-simmered mutton and barley soup. The main adjustments are the vessels and units, the salt, and the fact that mutton neck is now a special order.
- Mutton neckSold today as lamb neck or neck fillet; true mutton (variously reckoned as sheep over one or over two years) comes from a butcher or a halal market and has a much stronger flavour. Two pounds bone-in will yield something in the region of a pound of trimmed lean meat, depending on how bony and fatty the piece is.
- The teacupA teacup in books of this period is smaller than a measuring cup, and is variously reckoned at about 4 to 6 fl oz. A scant half teacup of pearl barley therefore works out somewhere around 1/4 to 1/3 cup — a modest amount that will still swell considerably over three hours.
- SaltA level tablespoon of salt in two quarts is heavy by current taste, and much of the liquid will reduce over three hours. Add half at the start and correct at the end.
- Stew-panAny heavy pot of about 5 quarts. The bone stock is made first and strained onto the meat, vegetables and barley, so you need either two pots or one pot used twice.
- Keep it at a bare simmerThree hours at a rolling boil will reduce two quarts to very little and turn the barley to paste. Hold it just below a shiver of bubbles, lid ajar, and top up with hot water if the level drops badly.
- Skim earlyThe instruction to skim as soon as it bubbles is the one that decides whether the broth is clear or grey. Mutton throws a good deal of scum in the first ten minutes; take it off before the barley starches cloud things.
- The butter and flourThis is a small blond roux — cook it until it foams and smells nutty but takes no colour, then whisk it into the hot broth off the boil to avoid lumps. Ten minutes' further cooking is needed to lose the raw flour taste.
- YieldAbout six servings as a first course, four as the lunch dish the headnote describes. It thickens further overnight and will want thinning with stock or water on reheating.
Scotch broth is the standard British name for the sheep-and-barley pottage of Scottish kitchens, where barley long outranked wheat as the everyday grain and neck, shank and scrag were the cuts a household could afford to cook all afternoon. Its appearance in a book of this kind reflects the late-nineteenth-century habit of ranging soups by nationality — mulligatawny, julienne, Scotch broth — as a way of teaching a young housekeeper variety within a fixed repertoire. The thickening of butter and flour stirred in at the very end is often said to be a Victorian refinement rather than a Scottish one, traditional versions being generally described as relying on the barley itself for body. The recipe's opening note, that the broth is substantial enough to carry a luncheon or a light dinner, marks it as the kind of soup period cookery treated as a course capable of standing in for a joint.