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Scotch Broth
Mrs. G. B. Wyllie.
Take one-half tea-cup barley, four quarts cold water bring this to the boil and skim now put in a neck of mutton and boil again for half an hour, skim, well the sides of the pot also; have ready two carrots, one large onion, a small head of cabbage, one bunch of parsley, one sprig of celery top; chop all these fine, add your chopped vegetables, pepper and salt to taste. This soup takes two hours to cook.
A straightforward barley-and-mutton broth; the only real technique is patient skimming. A few of the quantities and cuts need translating.
- Neck of muttonAsk for lamb or mutton neck, sold as neck fillet or bone-in neck slices; roughly 2 to 2 1/2 lb bone-in for four quarts of water. Bone-in is the point — the marrow and collagen are what give the broth body. Older mutton has more flavour but wants the full two hours or more.
- Tea-cupA nineteenth-century tea-cup is smaller than a modern mug; it was never a standardised measure, but it is commonly reckoned at about 6 fl oz, which makes a half tea-cup of barley roughly 1/3 cup. Pearl barley swells several times its dry volume, so resist adding more unless you want a porridge.
- Skimming is the recipeThe recipe calls for skimming twice, the second time including the sides of the pot, and that is much of the difference between a clear broth and a cloudy, greasy one. Keep the pot at a bare tremble rather than a rolling boil; a hard boil works the fat back into the liquid and no amount of skimming will retrieve it.
- Order of cookingThe vegetables go in only after the meat has had its half-hour and been skimmed, which leaves them roughly 90 minutes in the pot. That is far longer than modern practice; if you want the carrot and cabbage to hold any shape, add them in the last 30 to 40 minutes and let the barley and meat have the long simmer alone.
- Celery top"A sprig of celery top" means the leafy end of the stalk, which older kitchens kept for the pot. Two or three stalks with leaves, or a small handful of leaves alone, does the same job. Parsley stalks can go in whole and be fished out.
- SeasoningThe recipe seasons along with the vegetables, but salt is better added at the end: four quarts reduces noticeably over two hours and what tasted right early will be sharp by the finish. White pepper is often preferred for this kind of broth and does not speckle it.
- FinishingLift the neck out, strip the meat from the bone, discard gristle and the surface fat, and return the meat to the pot. Chilling overnight lets the fat set into a cap you can lift off in one piece.
- YieldFour quarts of water yields about six to eight generous bowls as a main course with bread. It thickens considerably on standing; loosen with water or stock when reheating.
Scotch broth is a long-simmered mutton and barley soup that appears in Scottish and English cookery books from the eighteenth century onward, and which Dr. Johnson is famously recorded as eating — by Boswell, on their tour of the Hebrides. Barley rather than potato or rice marks it as northern: it was the grain that grew reliably in Scottish fields, and it does double duty as thickener and starch. Recipes like this one, contributed to a subscription cookbook by a named local woman, show how such dishes travelled with emigration; such collections are full of Scottish and Ulster household soups set down by the women who had carried them over. The reliance on neck — a cheap, bony, hard-working cut — and on whatever root vegetables and cabbage the garden held is the signature of everyday rather than company cooking.