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Beers Heart

A stew of beef heart cooked with onion, ketchup, parsley, celery, cayenne pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beers Heart

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the heart

  1. Wash the heart well.

  2. Cut it into half-inch squares.

  3. Stew the heart pieces in enough water to cover them for ten minutes. Add salt to the water to draw out the blood.

  4. Discard any scum that rises.

  5. Remove the meat.

  6. Strain the liquid.

  7. Return the chopped heart to the liquid.

Make the stew

  1. Add the sliced onion, ketchup, parsley, chopped celery, cayenne pepper, and butter.

  2. Stew until the meat is very tender.

  3. Add the browned flour.

  4. Boil once.

  5. Serve.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef heart
Is the main meat, becoming tender after long, gentle stewing.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the stew a smoother, rounder mouthfeel.
Browned flour
Thickens the cooking liquid as its starch swells with heat.
Onion
Contributes savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens in the stew.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavour and a little texture to the stew.

The step that matters

Stew until the meat is very tender. Heart is dense, tough muscle, and it needs long, gentle simmering to break down its connective tissue. Cooking it too briskly or stopping early leaves it chewy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ketchup, parsley, celery, pepper, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ketchup, parsley, celery, pepper, butter, flour. 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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