No. 364

Chicken and Mutton Broth with Barley

Bouillon de Poulet et Mouton a l'Orge

Break up three pounds of chicken carcasses and place them in a saucepan with a pound of lean mutton cut in squares and an ounce of pearl hulled barley washed in several waters, half a pound of minced and blanched turnips; moisten with three quarts of water, boil, skim, and reboil all gently for three hours; skim again, season and strain through a fine sieve; serve in cups.

← No. 363 Chicken Broth Plain Broths & Soups for Invalids No. 365 Chicken and Veal Broth →

For the Modern Kitchen

A clear invalid broth from Ranhofer's The Epicurean, built for extraction rather than for eating the solids. The method is sound as written; only the shopping list and the definition of "gently" need translating.

Chicken carcassesThree pounds of broken-up carcasses means backs, necks, wing tips and the picked frames of roasted birds — not meaty pieces. Butchers sell them as backs or soup bones; two large frames plus a few wings will get you there.
Lean muttonMutton is sheep over about two years old and is rarely sold in the US outside halal and Caribbean markets. Lamb shoulder or leg, trimmed hard of fat, is the practical substitute; it will taste milder and sweeter than Ranhofer intended.
Pearl hulled barleyAn ounce is about 2 tablespoons — a token amount, there for body and a faint sweetness rather than as a grain garnish. Since the broth is strained, the barley's only job is to give it substance, so do not be tempted to add more or the result turns cloudy and gluey.
Blanched turnipsBlanching here means a brief boil in water that is then discarded, which pulls out the sulphurous bite. Skip it and the finished broth carries a cabbage note that has no place in a broth meant for the sick.
"Boil, skim, and reboil gently""Boil, skim, and reboil all gently" -- The hinge of the recipe. Bring it up once to raise the scum, skim, then hold it at a bare shiver — 180–190F, with the odd bubble breaking — for the three hours. A rolling boil emulsifies fat and drives fine protein into suspension, and straining alone will not do much for a broth already turned cloudy.
StrainingA fine sieve lined with a double layer of damp cheesecloth gives a much cleaner cup. Chill the strained broth and lift the solidified fat off the top before reheating.
SeasoningRanhofer says only "season," his usual shorthand, and leaves the amount to the cook. Salt to taste at the end, after the liquid has reduced and concentrated.
YieldThree quarts of water reduces to roughly two quarts over three hours — eight to ten of the small cups the recipe calls for. It keeps four days refrigerated and freezes well.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, gave over a whole section of The Epicurean (1894) to broths and soups for invalids, and their presence in a book otherwise concerned with terrapin and truffled galantines says something about how nineteenth-century households thought about illness. Before antibiotics, feeding the sick was one of the few interventions available, and invalid cookery of the period tended to work through graduated liquids: plain broths, broths strengthened with a second meat, beef teas, jellies. The double stock here — poultry frames for gelatin and clarity, mutton for depth and what the period called "nourishment" — reflects the belief that red meat carried strength that white meat lacked. Mutton was the ordinary sheep meat of American and British tables until well into the twentieth century, when a taste for younger, milder lamb displaced it almost entirely. The scant ounce of barley is equally of its time: pearl barley water was a standard sickroom drink, generally traced back through centuries of European medical cookery, and Ranhofer is nodding to that tradition rather than making a soup of it.