Skip to main content
Main

Stuffed Heart

A stuffed beef heart cooked slowly with breadcrumbs, onion, herbs, and spices, finished with a browned crust and served with its own gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sage and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,445 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stuffed Heart

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stuff

  1. Wash the heart well, removing veins, arteries, and clotted blood.

  2. Stuff the heart with a mixture of breadcrumbs, corn oil, onion, sage, and parsley.

Cook

  1. Brown the stuffed heart in a small amount of fat in a fireless cooker vessel until well browned on all sides.

  2. Add hot water, bay leaf, cloves, and peppercorns.

  3. Heat to boiling, then place in the fireless cooker with a well-heated stone.

  4. Leave to cook for 3 to 4 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, lift the heart from the liquid and brown it in the oven.

  2. Thicken the stock and use it as gravy.

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. Sage + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sage + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together731 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Corn + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together943 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Heart
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender during long, gentle cooking.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the stuffing so it holds together inside the heart.
Corn oil
Adds fat to the stuffing, keeping it moist and tender as it cooks.
Onion
Adds aroma and savory flavor to the stuffing as it softens.
Hot water
Forms the cooking liquid that tenderizes the heart and becomes the base for the gravy.

The step that matters

Brown the stuffed heart before the long cook. Browning creates color and rich flavor through the Maillard reaction on the surface. Searing well on all sides before the slow, moist cooking builds the flavor that carries into the stock and gravy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, sage, parsley, clove):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, sage, parsley, clove. 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.

You might also like

Corn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesCream of Corn SoupCream of Corn Soup50 recipesGreen Corn SoupGreen Corn Soup46 recipesCornmeal GruelCornmeal Gruel41 recipes