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Mutton Broth in Cups
Chop up very finely with a cleaver one pound and a half fresh neck of mutton, including the bones, and place in a saucepan with a medium sliced carrot, one ditto turnip, two ditto leeks, two branches chopped celery, two branches parsley, one sprig by a leaf, one clove and one salt-spoon thyme; pour in two and a half quarts cold water, season with a tablespoon of salt, cover the pan and let slowly boil for one hour and fifteen minutes, being careful to skim off the fat every ten minutes Strain the broth through a napkin into six cups and serve.
A clear restorative broth of the old sickroom-and-supper kind, built for clarity rather than body. The whole recipe hinges on the skimming and the gentle heat.
- Never let it truly boil"let slowly boil" is best read as a bare tremble at the surface, well short of a rolling boil. A hard boil emulsifies the mutton fat and pulls fine particles into suspension, and no amount of straining afterwards will give you a clear cup.
- Skimming every ten minutesThis is not fussiness. Neck of mutton throws a good deal of fat and grey scum in the first half hour, and lifting it off with a shallow spoon is what separates a clean broth from a greasy one. Chilling the strained broth and lifting off the solid fat cap will also do the job.
- "One sprig by a leaf"Almost certainly garbled; the likeliest reading is "one sprig bay leaf". Treat it as one bay leaf.
- Salt-spoonA salt-spoon holds about a quarter teaspoon, so roughly a quarter teaspoon of thyme; the recipe does not say whether fresh or dried.
- The saltA tablespoon of salt in two and a half quarts is on the assertive side by current taste, particularly as the liquid reduces. Start with two teaspoons and correct at the end, once you know how far it has gone down.
- Chopping the bonesA cleaver through neck bones is asking a lot of a home knife. Have the butcher saw the neck into short lengths instead; the point is exposed marrow and cut surfaces, not fine mincing.
- "Two ditto leeks""Ditto" carries "medium sliced" down the list: one medium carrot, one medium turnip, two medium leeks, all sliced.
- Straining through a napkinA clean linen tea towel or a double layer of damp cheesecloth in a sieve. Ladle rather than pour, and stop before the sediment at the bottom of the pan goes in.
- YieldSix cups as written.
Mutton broth belonged to the invalid cookery tradition as much as to the dinner table: nineteenth-century household manuals and hospital diet lists prescribed it for convalescents, and the insistence on relentless skimming comes straight out of that context, where fat was thought to burden a weak stomach. Serving it in cups rather than plates is part of the same thinking, and also of the fashion for clear soups poured into handled cups at the start of a formal meal. The neck is the classic cut for the job — well supplied with bone — and its use here is a reminder that mutton, the meat of a mature sheep, was once ordinary butcher's stock in a way it no longer is; a shoulder or neck of lamb is the practical substitute today, milder and quicker to give up its flavour.