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To Roast Beef Heart

A roasted beef heart stuffed with dressing, served with gravy and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and turkey work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 248 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

To Roast Beef Heart

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Wash the beef heart carefully and open it to remove the ventricles.

  2. Soak the heart in cold water until the blood is discharged.

  3. Wipe it dry and stuff it with dressing.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the heart at 350°F (175°C) for about 1.5 hours.

  2. Serve with gravy thickened with some of the stuffing and currant jelly.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Beef + turkeytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together248 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Turkey + curranttop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together68 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Beef + curranttop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,464 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef heart
Forms the main meat; its dense muscle becomes tender and sliceable with slow roasting.
Dressing (for turkey)
Stuffing fills the open heart, adding moisture and flavour as the meat cooks.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savoury richness to the sliced meat when served.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity that balances the rich, savoury meat and gravy.

The step that matters

Soaking the heart until the blood is discharged. Heart holds a lot of blood in its chambers. Soaking it in cold water flushes out residual blood, which otherwise can taint the flavour and leave dark, bloody patches after cooking.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, turkey):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, turkey. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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