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Cooking Beef Heart

A stuffed beef heart baked with suet, breadcrumbs, herbs, and pork fat, served with optional red currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Cooking Beef Heart

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a good oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the heart

  1. Trim off gristle and fat from the beef heart.

  2. Place the heart in boiling water and simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Dry the heart and fill the holes with stuffing of your choice.

Make the stuffing

  1. For veal stuffing, mix suet, bread crumbs, parsley, thyme, marjoram, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

Bake and serve

  1. Skewer thin slices of fat pork over the top of the heart.

  2. Dredge the heart with flour and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1.5 hours.

  3. Make gravy by pouring soup or broth into the baking pan and thickening with brown thickening.

  4. Serve hot with red currant jelly if desired.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  5. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

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 with long gentle cooking.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich during baking.
Bread crumbs
Soak up fat and juices, giving the stuffing body and a soft texture.
Flour
Dries the surface of the heart so it browns during baking.
Brown thickening
Thickens the broth into a gravy that coats the meat.

The step that matters

Simmering the heart before stuffing. Simmering for 30 minutes firms and loosens the dense muscle so it cooks through evenly later. Drying the heart well before stuffing and dredging matters, because surface moisture prevents flour and fat from browning and can make the stuffing soggy.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, bread, parsley, thyme, marjoram, lemon):

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, bread, parsley, thyme, marjoram, lemon. 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.

More beef heart recipes

Roasted 45Stew 27Stuffed 21Baked 9Soup 3Roast 3 See all 9 →

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