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Stuffed Beef's Heart

A stuffed beef heart cooked by boiling in stock, then sliced.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Stuffed Beef's Heart

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the beef heart thoroughly, removing all coagulated blood from the ventricles.

  2. Prepare a stuffing with breadcrumbs, minced pork, onion, parsley, and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Stuff the heart with the mixture, packing it in well, and sew it up in mosquito netting fitted to its shape.

Cook and set

  1. Boil the stuffed heart in weak stock for two hours.

  2. Allow the heart to cool almost completely before removing it from the cloth, placing a weight on top to flatten it.

  3. Once cooled and stiff, cut the heart into thin slices.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  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 and becomes firm and sliceable once cooked and cooled.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the stuffing so it holds together when sliced.
Minced pork
Adds fat and moisture to the stuffing, keeping it from drying out during boiling.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavour to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Cooling under a weight before slicing. Cooling the heart almost completely while pressed lets the stuffing and meat set and firm. Slicing before it is cool and stiff would crumble the stuffing and tear the slices.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, onion, pepper. 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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