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Mutton Broth
After procuring one and a half pounds neck of mutton, remove all the bones and cut the meat into small dice-like pieces. Cut a small red carrot, one small turnip, one small white onion, two leeks and two branches celery in same size pieces as the meat.
Heat one and a half tablespoons melted butter in a large saucepan, add all the ingredients and gently brown for ten minutes, occasionally stirring meanwhile. Moisten with two and a half quarts hot broth or water. Season with one tablespoon salt, one teaspoon white pepper and two tablespoons Worcestershire sauce, adding the bones of the neck. Cover the pan and slowly boil for forty minutes; remove the bones and skim all the fat from the surface of the broth. Pour into a hot soup tureen and serve.
A straightforward brown mutton broth, but the seasoning and the cooking time both need adjusting for modern meat and modern palates.
- The seasoning is very heavyOne tablespoon of salt for 2½ quarts is defensible if you moisten with plain water, but if you use a commercial stock it will be far too much. Add half, then correct at the end.
- Mutton, and what to buy insteadNeck of mutton — sheep generally reckoned two years or older, with the one-to-two-year animal usually called hogget — is rarely sold outside halal and specialist butchers. Lamb neck or shoulder works, though it is milder and sweeter; if you find true mutton it is worth the search for the deeper flavour this soup was built on.
- Forty minutes is not enoughNeck is collagen-rich, hard-working meat. Diced small it will be edible after forty minutes but still tight; ninety minutes to two hours at a bare simmer gives tender meat and a broth with body.
- "Slowly boil" means simmerA true boil emulsifies the fat back into the liquid and clouds the broth, which defeats the skimming step at the end. Keep it at a lazy bubble.
- Brown the meat, not the vegetables, firstTen minutes with everything in at once will steam the vegetables before the meat colours. Brown the diced mutton alone in the butter, then add the vegetables for the last few minutes.
- Worcestershire sauceTwo tablespoons is a period touch and reads as quite assertive today. A tablespoon added near the end of cooking keeps its brightness rather than boiling it flat.
- SkimmingMutton fat sets hard and tastes waxy when cool, so skim thoroughly. Chilling the broth and lifting the solid cap off is easier and more complete than spooning it hot.
- YieldAbout 2½ quarts before reduction, which serves six to eight as a first course or four as a main with bread.
Mutton broth was one of the workhorse soups of the nineteenth-century English-speaking kitchen, doubling as everyday supper and as invalid food — thin mutton broth with barley or rice appears in sickroom cookery throughout the period. This version is the brown, brothy, French-influenced treatment rather than the pale Scotch broth: the meat and vegetables are cut to a uniform dice and coloured in butter before liquid goes in, a small dose of restaurant technique applied to a cheap cut. The neck was chosen precisely because it was cheap and bony, and the instruction to return the bones to the pot and lift them out at the end shows the cook getting gelatine out of them without giving them the hours a stockpot would. The Worcestershire sauce is a characteristic detail of its era, when bottled sauces were widely used for savoury depth in Anglo-American cooking, and they turn up in soups where a modern cook would reach for longer cooking instead.