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Mutton Broth
Wash two pounds of the scrag end of a neck of mutton, wipe it with a cloth, cut off the fat and skin, scrape the meat from the bones and chop it into small squares. Put the meat in a saucepan with three pints of water and the bones in another pan with one pint of water. Place the pan containing the bones by the side of the fire and let it simmer until wanted. Set the pan with the meat over a quick fire, boil it, skimming frequently, and when the scum comes up quite white put in one pint of pearl barley and skim again. Cut a carrot, a turnip and an equal quantity of celery into small pieces and fry them in one tablespoonful of butter for five minutes, add them to the meat and cook slowly for about four hours. Put one tablespoonful each of flour and butter into a saucepan over the fire, and when the flour is smooth add the strained broth from the bones, and pour it into the meat broth. Add one tablespoonful of finely chopped parsley, two of salt, and one saltspoonful of pepper. Simmer gently for ten minutes longer and serve without straining. In most cases the meat is preferred strained from the broth, but if the skin and fat are removed the strong and disagreeable flavor will be prevented. A larger quantity of vegetables may be used if desired, or rice may be used instead of barley, or the meat may be cut into dice and fried a few minutes in butter. If the carrots are grated they will give the broth a fine color.
A late-Victorian invalid-and-supper broth, built on two pans running at once. Most of it translates directly; a few quantities need attention.
- The barley is the problemOne pint of dry pearl barley in three pints of water will absorb everything and give you porridge, not broth. A quarter cup to a half cup of pearl barley is right for three pints; if you want the thicker, spoonable version the original seems to expect, add liquid as it cooks.
- SaltTwo tablespoons of salt for roughly two quarts is heavy by modern taste. Add a teaspoon at the start and season at the end, after four hours of reduction has concentrated everything.
- Scrag endThe scrag is the bony neck of the sheep, cheap and gelatinous. Ask a butcher for lamb or mutton neck; lamb shoulder chops or shank are workable substitutes.
- Mutton versus lambMutton is sheep over about two years old, strongly flavored and rarely sold in American supermarkets. Halal and Caribbean butchers are the likeliest source. Lamb will taste milder than the recipe intends.
- "Quick fire" and simmeringA quick fire is high heat, used only to bring the pot up and drive the scum to the surface. After skimming, drop it to a bare simmer at around 195F for the four hours; a rolling boil will emulsify the fat and cloud the broth.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon.
- The two-pan methodThe bones simmer separately in a pint of water, then that liquid is thickened with a butter-and-flour roux and stirred back in. It is worth keeping: the bone liquor carries the body.
- Fat and flavorTrimming the fat and skin before cooking, as instructed, is the hinge of the whole dish. Mutton fat is where the muttony taste lives, and it goes tallowy on the tongue as the broth cools. Chill and lift any remaining cap before reheating.
- YieldProbably a scant two quarts after four hours' simmering; serves four to six.
Mutton broth was standard sickroom cookery in nineteenth-century England and America, prescribed for convalescents alongside beef tea and barley water. The scrag end of the neck was among the cheapest cuts on the carcass, and pearl barley -- hulled and polished grain -- was a common thickener in British broths. Oscar Tschirky, who ran the Waldorf dining rooms from 1893, published his cook book in 1896, drawing on the hotel's repertoire and on the standard English and French sources of the day; the insistence here on removing the fat and skin reflects a period in which mutton's "strong and disagreeable flavor" was a frequently voiced complaint.