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Beef Heart Baked or Roasted

A roasted beef heart stuffed with bread and butter, seasoned with salt, pepper, and thyme, served with a lemon‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beef Heart Baked or Roasted

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cut the beef heart in half and remove the strings from the inside.

  2. Wash it with warm water and rub the inside with pepper and salt.

  3. Fill it with a stuffing made of bread and butter moistened with water, seasoned with pepper, salt, and thyme if desired.

  4. Put the halves back together and tie with string, then rub the outside with pepper and salt.

  5. Dot the outside with bits of butter and dredge with flour.

Roast and serve

  1. Place it on a trivet or muffin rings in a dripping pan, adding a plate of water to baste with.

  2. Roast it in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) for about one hour, turning and basting frequently.

  3. When done, remove it and slice a lemon thickly, placing it in the pan with a bit of butter and dredged flour.

  4. Let it brown, then add boiling water, stirring until smooth, and serve in a gravy tureen.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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 savoury when roasted slowly.
Bread
Makes up the stuffing, absorbing moisture and butter to keep the filling soft.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the stuffing and helps the outside brown and carry flavour.
Flour
Dredging coats the outside to promote browning; the extra flour thickens the pan gravy.

The step that matters

Basting and turning during the roast. Turning and basting keep the meat moist and promote even browning, since lean muscle meat dries out quickly in a hot oven.

Swap the thyme

The recipe marks thyme as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, bread, butter, flour, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Thymethe original
  4. Sagefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, bread, butter, flour, 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.

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