Skip to main content
Main

Beef Heart Baked or Roasted

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 it with warm water.

  4. Rub the inside with pepper and salt.

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

  6. Put the heart back together and tie it with string.

  7. Rub the outside with pepper and salt.

  8. Dot the outside with bits of butter.

  9. Dredge the outside with flour.

Roast and make the gravy

  1. Place it 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) for about 1 hour, turning and basting frequently.

  4. Remove from the oven.

  5. Cut the lemon into thick slices.

  6. Place the lemon slices in the pan with a bit of butter.

  7. Dredge the lemon slices with 1 teaspoon of flour.

  8. Let it brown.

  9. Add a small teacup of boiling water and stir until smooth.

  10. 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. 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
Is the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy when roasted slowly with basting.
Bread
Forms a moist stuffing that absorbs juices and keeps the interior soft.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the outside brown in the oven.
Flour
Coats the outside and thickens the pan juices into a gravy.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich pan gravy.

The step that matters

Basting and turning during the roast. Turning and basting keep the heart's surface moist and promote even browning. Without them, the outside can dry and scorch before the centre cooks through.

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