Greek Broth
Cut up a shoulder of mutton, or the neck, take out the bones and add to both meat and bones 2 quarts of water, 1/2 pint split peas, 2 tablespoonfuls of chopped ham, 1 onion, 1 carrot, some parsley and thyme. Cook 3 hours, remove the bones, cut up the meat and press the rest through a sieve. Season to taste and return the meat to the broth.
A long-simmered mutton and split pea broth of the plainest sort, and the sort of thing a three-hour pot handles better than any shortcut. A few of the quantities and cuts need translating.
- The meatMutton shoulder or neck means sheep over a year old, rarely sold in the US; lamb shoulder or lamb neck, about 2 to 2 1/2 lb bone-in, behaves the same way but tastes milder and cooks a little faster. Keep the bones in the pot for the full simmer, as instructed, since they are most of the body of the broth.
- A half pint of split peasThat is a liquid half pint used as a dry measure, roughly one cup, about 7 oz. Green or yellow both work; they will collapse completely in three hours, which is what the sieving step assumes.
- Two quarts of water for two hours plusTwo quarts of water for a three-hour simmer -- you can lose a good deal of it to evaporation, depending on how hard it boils and whether the pot is covered. Either start with an extra pint or top up with hot water partway through, or the peas will scorch on the bottom once they thicken.
- Chopped hamTwo tablespoons is a seasoning, not a meat component. Use a scrap of dry-cured ham, prosciutto end or a piece of gammon; it is there for salt and savour, so hold back on salt until the end.
- The hinge: skim before you sieveMutton and lamb throw a great deal of fat and grey scum in the first twenty minutes. Skim it off, or the finished broth tastes tallowy and no amount of seasoning will fix it. Chilling the pot and lifting the fat cap is the surest method if you have time.
- Pressing through a sieveThe original means the vegetables and peas, not the meat, which is cut up and returned. A food mill or a wooden spoon against a coarse sieve gives a better texture than a blender, which makes it gluey.
- SeasoningSalt, pepper, and a squeeze of lemon at the end. Lemon is not in the original but suits the name and lifts a broth this heavy.
- YieldAbout 1 1/2 quarts finished, serving four to six as a first course or four as a main with bread.
The name here says more about the era's menu-writing than about Greece: cookbooks of the period routinely attached national labels to soups on the strength of a single ingredient or a vague association, and a mutton-and-pulse broth was easily filed under the eastern Mediterranean. Sheep and dried pulses genuinely are the backbone of Greek and Balkan country cooking, so the pairing is not arbitrary, but split-pea puree thickened broth with a little ham, an onion and a carrot is squarely English kitchen practice. Books in the travel-cookery mould collected such dishes for readers who wanted a taste of abroad within the range of a home cook and an English butcher, which meant mutton neck, a cheap and gelatinous cut, and the kind of long unattended simmer a coal range was suited to.