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Stewed Ox Heart

A stew of ox heart with corned pork, spices, and a mushroom catsup sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Summer savory and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 214 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stewed Ox Heart

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the heart

  1. Clean the ox heart and remove the gristle.

  2. Make a stuffing with beef suet, bread crumbs, summer savory, thyme, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Lard the heart with strips of fat corned pork.

  4. Stuff the heart.

  5. Sew it up.

Stew

  1. Place slices of corned pork in the bottom of a stew-pan.

  2. Place the heart in the stew-pan.

  3. Add allspice, peppercorns, bay leaves.

  4. Pour in cold water.

  5. Cover the pot.

  6. Simmer slowly for 2 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Rub flour and butter together.

  2. Add gravy and mushroom catsup.

  3. Let the sauce simmer.

  4. Pour some over the heart when serving.

  5. Send the rest to the table.

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. Summer savory + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together214 recipes

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

  2. Thyme + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

  3. Summer savory + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together52 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Ox heart
Forms the main body of the stew and becomes tender during slow simmering.
Beef suet
Adds fat to the stuffing, keeping it moist and rich during cooking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb fat and juices in the stuffing, giving it a softer, binding texture.
Flour and butter
Form a roux that thickens the sauce and gives it body.
Corned pork
Adds salty, savory flavor to the heart and the bottom of the stew.
Mushroom catsup
Contributes concentrated savory, umami flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly for 2 hours. Gentle, low heat lets the tough muscle fibers and connective tissue of the heart break down into tender meat. Boiling hard toughens the meat and can make the liquid cloudy.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, summer savory, thyme, pepper, pork, flour):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, summer savory, thyme, pepper, pork, 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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