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Stuffed Hearts with Vegetables

A dish of calves' hearts stuffed with vegetables, baked in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Stuffed Hearts with Vegetables

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the hearts

  1. Clean and wash the calves' hearts.

  2. Stuff the hearts, skewer into shape, and lard the upper surface.

  3. Sprinkle the hearts with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  4. Dredge the hearts with flour.

Make the stuffing

  1. For the stuffing, roll six common crackers and mix with the chopped fat salt pork, chopped celery, chopped parsley, and chopped onion.

  2. Season the stuffing with salt and pepper.

Brown and bake

  1. Sauté the hearts in pork fat with one stalk celery, two sprigs parsley, four slices carrot, one slice turnip, a bit of bay leaf, two cloves, and ten peppercorns.

  2. When the hearts are well browned, remove them to a deep earthenware dish.

  3. Add 1½ cups brown stock to the dish.

  4. Cover closely and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 1½ hours, basting every 20 minutes.

Prepare the vegetables and serve

  1. Cook the carrots and turnips until tender in boiling salted water.

  2. Drain the carrots and turnips.

  3. Season the carrots and turnips with butter, salt, and pepper.

  4. Remove the hearts to a hot platter.

  5. Surround the hearts with carrots and turnips cut into thin strips.

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Calves' hearts
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow, covered braising.
Pork fat
Carries heat for browning the hearts and adds richness to the surface.
Flour
Dries the surface of the hearts so they brown well and help form a crust.
Common crackers
Bind the stuffing and absorb moisture from the fat and seasonings.
Brown stock
Provides liquid for gentle braising and builds a savory, meaty flavor.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the stuffing, keeping it moist as it cooks.

The step that matters

Browning the hearts before adding stock. Browning the floured surface in fat builds deep flavor through the Maillard reaction, and a properly seared exterior holds its shape during the long covered bake.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, pork, celery, parsley, carrot, turnip):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, pork, celery, parsley, carrot, turnip. 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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