Skip to main content
Main

Cold Beef's Heart

A preserved beef heart cooked slowly in salted water and vinegar, then chilled and sliced.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Cold Beef's Heart

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the heart well and soak it in cold salted water for 30 minutes.

  2. Wipe the heart and stuff the openings with a mixture of bread crumbs, minced fat salt pork, chopped onion, and pepper.

  3. Sew the heart in coarse muslin fitted to its shape.

Cook and press

  1. Place the heart in a pot with cold salted water and 1 tablespoon of vinegar per quart.

  2. Boil slowly for 2 hours, turning several times.

  3. After boiling, place a heavy weight on the heart and let it sit for 12 hours.

  4. Remove the cloth, and your cold entree is ready to slice crosswise.

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 + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 body of the dish, becoming tender and sliceable after slow boiling and pressing.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing, keeping the lean heart moist as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorbs juices in the stuffing, helping it hold together and stay moist inside the heart.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the cooking liquid, brightening flavor and helping to firm the meat.

The step that matters

Boiling slowly for 2 hours. A gentle simmer breaks down the tough connective tissue in the heart slowly. A hard, rapid boil toughens muscle fibers and can make the meat dry and stringy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, pork, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, pork, pepper, vinegar. 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipes