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Beef Heart Baked or Roasted

A roasted or baked beef heart stuffed with bread and butter, served with a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. 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 of the heart.

  3. Wash the heart with warm water.

  4. Rub the inside of the heart with salt and pepper.

  5. Fill the heart with a stuffing made of bread and butter moistened with water, seasoned with salt, pepper, and thyme if desired.

  6. Tie the heart together with string.

  7. Rub the outside of the heart with salt and pepper.

  8. Dot the outside of the heart with bits of butter.

  9. Dredge the heart with flour.

Roast

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

  2. Add 1 pint of water to the pan for basting.

  3. Roast the heart in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

  4. Turn and baste the heart frequently for about 1 hour.

  5. Remove the heart from the oven.

  6. Cut the lemon into thick slices.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Add a bit of butter dredged in 1 teaspoon of flour to the pan and let it brown.

  2. Add a small teacup of boiling water to the pan.

  3. Stir the gravy until smooth.

  4. Serve the gravy 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, which turns tender and juicy when roasted slowly with basting.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffing and surface, and browns to flavour the gravy.
Flour
Coats the surface and, with browned butter, thickens the pan juices into gravy.
Bread (in the method)
Makes the stuffing absorb juices and hold a soft, moist texture inside the heart.

The step that matters

Turn and baste the heart frequently. Regular basting keeps the surface moist in the hot oven, so the lean muscle does not dry out before it is cooked through and the pan juices stay usable for gravy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Limefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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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