Skip to main content
Main

Beef Heart Baked or Roasted

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the heart

  1. Cut the beef heart in half.

  2. Remove the strings from the inside.

  3. Wash the heart with warm water.

  4. Rub the inside with pepper and salt.

  5. Fill the heart with a stuffing of bread, butter, water, pepper, salt, and optional thyme.

  6. Put the heart back together.

  7. Tie the heart with string.

  8. Rub the outside with pepper and salt.

  9. Dot the outside with bits of butter.

  10. Dredge the outside with flour.

Roast

  1. Place the heart on a trivet or muffin rings in a roasting pan.

  2. Add 1 pint of water for basting.

  3. Roast in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C), turning and basting frequently for about 1 hour.

  4. Remove the heart.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Place thick slices of lemon in the pan with a bit of butter and a teaspoon of flour.

  2. Let it brown.

  3. Add a small teacup of boiling water.

  4. Stir until smooth.

  5. 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 meat; its dense muscle becomes tender and sliceable after slow roasting with basting.
Bread
Absorbs butter and juices in the stuffing, keeping the filling moist and giving it body.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the stuffing and browns the outside, adding flavour and colour.
Flour
Coats the outside and later thickens the pan juices into a smooth gravy.

The step that matters

Turning and basting frequently while roasting. Beef heart is lean and dense, so it dries out easily. Regular basting with the pan water and turning keeps the surface moist and promotes even browning.

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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes