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Beef Heart

A stuffed beef heart simmered and roasted, served with brown gravy and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and currant work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Beef Heart

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the heart in several waters and clean the blood from the pipes.

  2. Soak the heart in a mixture of vinegar and water for at least 2 hours.

  3. Drain the heart and fill it with ham forcemeat or sage and onion stuffing.

  4. Fasten the heart securely and tie it in a cloth.

Cook and serve

  1. Place it in a pan of boiling water and let it simmer gently for 2 hours.

  2. Remove the cloth and roast the heart, basting it with good dripping for 2 more hours.

  3. Serve with brown gravy and currant jelly.

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. Vinegar + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Beef + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,729 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Vinegar + hamtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

  4. Beef + vinegartop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,895 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Beef + curranttop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,464 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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, becoming tender with long, gentle cooking.
Ham forcemeat or sage and onion stuffing
Fills the cavity, adding moisture and savoury flavour to the dense meat.
Good dripping
Basting fat that promotes browning and adds richness to the roasted surface.

The step that matters

Simmer gently before roasting. Gentle simmering softens the tough muscle fibres slowly; a hard boil can toughen the meat and make the heart dry and chewy.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, vinegar, ham):

  1. Applefits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Grapefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, vinegar, ham. 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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