No. 375

Mutton Broth

Bouillon de Mouton

Cut into pieces four pounds of very fresh neck of mutton free of fat; put these into a saucepan. Prepare two ounces of carrots, four ounces of turnips, two ounces of celery, four ounces of leeks, a few sprigs of parsley, and a little thyme; fry colorless, the turnips, celery, carrots, and leeks in a quarter of a pound of butter; moisten with four quarts of water or stock, season well and let boil slowly during one hour and a half; remove all the fat from the surface, strain it through a napkin and serve it in cups. Another way is to wash in cold water three pounds of very fresh neck of mutton, cut into pieces; put this into a saucepan with two and a half quarts of water, boil, skim, then add three quarters of a pound of minced turnips, a few parsley stalks, and a few thyme leaves, seasoning with salt. Boil slowly for two hours, remove all the fat, strain it through a fine sieve and serve. Some pearl barley cooked separately in water or broth may be added to either. If the broth needs to be clarified, then chop up half a pound of lean mutton and mix in with it one raw egg; dilute with a little broth or water, and put it into the mutton broth, stir it up quickly, and place the whole on the fire so that it barely simmers, and when clear, strain through a napkin.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Two versions of the same restorative broth: one enriched with butter-sweated vegetables, one lean and plain. Both are simple, but the yields are large and the mutton is the hard part to source.

Neck of muttonMutton means sheep over about two years old, sold now mainly by halal butchers and specialist farms. Lamb neck works and gives a milder, sweeter broth; ask for it bone-in and cut across into rounds, since the bone and connective tissue are what give body.
"Fry colorless"Sweat the vegetables in butter over low heat until soft but with no browning at all. Any colour and the broth turns from pale gold to muddy, which defeats the point of an invalid soup.
Quantities and yieldThe first version starts with four quarts (16 cups) of liquid; after 90 minutes' slow boiling, skimming and straining, expect somewhere around 3 to 3.5 quarts. The second, from two and a half quarts boiled two hours, will give rather less. Both halve cleanly.
A quarter pound of butterThat is 4 oz (one US stick) for the twelve ounces of vegetables the recipe lists, and the fat is skimmed off again at the end. Two tablespoons will sweat the vegetables perfectly well if you would rather not skim that much back out.
Straining through a napkinA clean linen tea towel or a double layer of damp cheesecloth in a sieve. Wet the cloth first so it does not absorb broth, and let it drip rather than pressing, which pushes fine particles through.
DegreasingSkimming hot is imprecise. Chill the strained broth and lift the solid fat cap off in one piece; mutton fat sets very hard and comes away cleanly, which matters here because tallow tastes waxy when cold.
The clarificationThe chopped lean mutton and raw egg form a raft that traps sediment. It must never reach a rolling boil or the raft breaks up and clouds everything again. Bring it up slowly, hold at the barest tremble for 20 to 30 minutes, then ladle out through the cloth without disturbing the raft.
Pearl barleyThe recipe cooks it separately in water or broth and adds it to the finished cup, which keeps its starch out of the strained broth. Simmer it 30 to 40 minutes, drain, and add a spoonful to each cup at serving.

A Little History

Escoffier's contemporary Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) reflects a restaurant that expected to feed the sick as well as the celebrating. The whole "Broths and Soups for Invalids" section belongs to a long medical tradition, going back through eighteenth-century English domestic manuals to classical humoral theory, in which clear meat broth was the standard nourishment for anyone too ill to chew. Mutton in particular was held to be strengthening and easily digested, and thin mutton broth with barley appears in sickroom instructions on both sides of the Atlantic through the nineteenth century. The clarification step with chopped meat and egg is the same consommé technique Ranhofer used for the dining room, applied here for a practical reason rather than an aesthetic one: a clear broth was thought to sit better on a weak stomach than a cloudy one.