A wide bowl of thick barley soup with soft diced carrot and turnip, beside a plate of pieces of stewed lamb shoulder cut from the bone. — Mutton and barley soup served beside its stewed meat.

Semi-Stewed Mutton and Barley (1857)

Name: Mutton and Barley Soup
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 3 h 20 min
Total time: 3 h 40 min
Cuisine: British
Ingredients: 3 lb bone-in lamb shoulder or mutton shoulder, in large pieces; 3¼ quarts cold water; 1 small onion, diced; 1 small carrot, diced; ½ small turnip, peeled and diced; 1 celery rib, diced; 1 cup pearl barley, rinsed; 1 tbsp salt; 2 tbsp sugar; ½ tsp ground black pepper; 3 tbsp all-purpose flour; ⅓ cup water for the batter

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Semi-stewed mutton and barley, Alexis Soyer’s hospital soup from Scutari: mutton or lamb simmered whole with barley, vegetables, salt, sugar and pepper, then thickened with a flour batter.

By The Forgotten MenuPublished Oct 28, 2026

Recipe makes: About 3 quarts of soup with the meat, 6 servings
Prep: 20 min
Cook: 3 hr 20 min
Total: 3 hr 40 min

About 20 minutes to bring the pot to a boil, 2½ hours at a gentle simmer, then half an hour more once the flour batter goes in. The meat keeps warm in a low oven during the last half hour.

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Mutton and barley soup served beside its stewed meat.

The story behind the recipe

This is the soup Alexis Soyer put first in his hospital diets, the dinner of the ordinary wards. He printed it in 1857 as “Semi-Stewed Mutton and Barley. Soup for 100 Men,” under a heading that calls the whole list a bill of fare first introduced at the Great Barrack Hospital, Scutari. Whole joints of mutton simmer with barley and vegetables, the meat comes out, and the soup is thickened and served beside it.

Why sugar in a mutton soup?

Sugar was one of Soyer’s two improvements. At Scutari in 1855 he made a trial soup from six rations, and when Dr. Cumming tasted it, Soyer told him he could still improve it with “a small quantity of sugar and flour.” Both are in the printed recipe, with the salt and pepper going in at the start as Cumming had suggested. The trial soup itself was a smaller, different formula: eight pints of water to four pounds of meat.

A footnote claims the printed soup “was in daily use for more than fifteen months from the date of its introduction by me.” That is Soyer’s own word for it. His note on the next page gives the rule that made a hundred-man pot easy to adjust: “½lb. of mutton will always make a pint of good soup.” The joints went in whole, he wrote, and were cut up for the different messes afterward. Above the recipe, he urged regimental and civil hospitals alike to keep scales and liquid measures, since the receipts depended on them. What Did Soyer Cook for the Soldiers at Scutari? follows his soup from the trial pot to the wards.

Making it today

Mutton is hard to buy in most of the United States, so a bone-in lamb shoulder stands in; mutton shoulder, where you can find it, is closer to the soup Soyer made. His “plain mixed vegetables” are left to the cook, and we use onion, carrot, turnip and celery, four of the vegetables he names for his beef tea. Our salt starts at about two-thirds of his, because the soup thickens as it cooks and salt is easier to add at the end than to take out. For a lighter cup to serve alongside, Soyer’s Beef Tea (1857) comes two numbers later in the same list.

No. 1.—Semi-Stewed Mutton and Barley. Soup for 100 Men.
Put in a convenient-sized caldron 130 pints of cold water, 70lbs. of meat, or about that quantity, 12lbs. of plain mixed vegetables (the best that can be obtained), 9lbs. 6oz. of barley, 1lb. 7oz. of salt, 1lb. 4oz. of flour, 1lb. 4oz. of sugar, 1oz. of pepper. Put all the ingredients into the pan at once, except the flour; set it on the fire, and when beginning to boil, diminish the heat, and simmer gently for two hours and a half; take the joints of meat out, and keep them warm in the orderly’s pan; add to the soup your flour, which you have mixed with enough water to form a light batter; stir well together with a large spoon; boil another half-hour, skim off the fat, and serve the soup and meat separate. The meat may be put back into the soup for a few minutes to warm again prior to serving. The soup should be stirred now and then while making, to prevent burning or sticking to the bottom of the caldron.
The joints are cooked whole, and afterwards cut up in different messes; being cooked this way, in a rather thick stock, the meat becomes more nutritous.
Note.—The word “about” is applied to the half and full diet, which varies the weight of the meat; but ½lb. of mutton will always make a pint of good soup: 3lbs. of mixed preserved vegetables must be used when fresh are not to be obtained, and put in one hour and a half prior to serving, instead of at first; they will then show better in the soup, and still be well done.
[Footnote] This receipt, so much approved of by the medical authorities, was in daily use for more than fifteen months from the date of its introduction by me.

Alexis SoyerSoyer’s Culinary Campaign (London: G. Routledge & Co.; New York: 18, Beekman Street, 1857), Soyer’s Hospital Diets, No. 1, Semi-Stewed Mutton and Barley, pp. 513–514

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Ingredients

For about 3 quarts of soup with the meat, 6 servings. Quantities are shown as written.

Quantities as written here, for about 3 quarts of soup with the meat, 6 servings.

Bone-in lamb shoulder or mutton shoulder, in large pieces3 lb
Cold water3 1/4 quart
Small onion, diced1
Small carrot, diced1
Small turnip, peeled and diced1/2
Celery, diced1 stalk
Pearl barley, rinsed1 cup
Salt1 tbsp
Sugar2 tbsp
Ground black pepper1/2 tsp
All-purpose flour3 tbsp
Water for the batter1/3 cup

Ingredients as written here

3 lb bone-in lamb shoulder or mutton shoulder, in large pieces
3¼ quarts cold water
1 small onion, diced
1 small carrot, diced
½ small turnip, peeled and diced
1 celery rib, diced
1 cup pearl barley, rinsed
1 tbsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
½ tsp ground black pepper
3 tbsp all-purpose flour
⅓ cup water for the batter

Equipment

Large heavy pot, at least 6 quarts, with a lid
Long-handled spoon
Small bowl and whisk
Ovenproof dish with a lid or foil
Instant-read thermometer
Ladle

Instructions

Put the lamb shoulder, cold water, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, pearl barley, salt, sugar and black pepper into the pot all at once.
Set it over medium-high heat. As soon as it begins to boil, turn the heat down so the soup barely bubbles, partly cover the pot and simmer gently for 2½ hours. Stir from the bottom every 20 minutes or so, more often toward the end, so the barley doesn’t stick.
Heat the oven to 200°F (95°C). Lift the meat into the ovenproof dish; it should be very tender and read well above 145°F (63°C), the safe minimum for lamb. Cover it and keep it warm in the oven.
Whisk the flour with the water for the batter in the small bowl until smooth and light. Stir it into the soup with the long spoon.
Bring the soup back to a gentle boil and cook for another 30 minutes, stirring now and then, until it is thick enough to coat the spoon and the barley is soft.
Skim the fat from the surface with the ladle. Taste and add a little more salt if it needs it.
Cut the meat from the bones into portions. Serve the soup and the meat separately, as Soyer did, or put the meat back into the soup for a few minutes to warm through before serving.

Nutrition

480calories per serving

Recipe makes: About 3 quarts of soup with the meat, 6 servings
Servings: 6

Estimated per serving (6) from USDA FoodData Central values for lamb shoulder (lean and fat, edible portion), pearl barley, flour, sugar, onion, carrot, turnip and celery, with the skimmed fat left out.

Recipe notes

When adjusting quantities

Soyer’s soup for 100 men cut to about one twenty-fourth. He held that half a pound of mutton makes a pint of good soup, so keep that ratio of meat to water when you scale it.

Notes

Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the servings.

Our amounts are Soyer’s divided by 24, with his 130 imperial pints of water coming to about 3¼ US quarts. The barley rounds up to a cup and the sugar, flour and pepper are close to exact; the salt is about two-thirds of the scaled amount. We swap in lamb shoulder for mutton and four named vegetables for his “plain mixed vegetables,” measure the batter water, partly cover the pot and use a warm oven in place of “the orderly’s pan.” We leave out his preserved-vegetable alternative. At Scutari, Soyer told the men to cut their meat small in the dish and pour the boiling soup over it so that both stayed hot, and you can serve it that way at home. Chill leftovers in shallow containers within 2 hours, keep them up to 4 days and reheat to 165°F (74°C); the soup thickens as it stands, so loosen it with water. Contains gluten (barley and flour).

Scaling changes the ingredients only; pan sizes and cooking times need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.