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Hashed Ox Heart

A dish of sliced ox heart simmered with onion, sugar, vinegar, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hashed Ox Heart

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the heart into slices a quarter of an inch thick.

  2. Sprinkle both sides with pepper, salt, and dried flour.

  3. Chop the onion finely.

Cook

  1. In a stewpan, combine the onion, sugar, and vinegar; dissolve the sugar.

  2. Add the gravy or water and the heart to the stewpan.

  3. Shake the pan and simmer gently over low heat for 20 minutes.

  4. Serve very hot.

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 + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ox heart
Is the main meat, which becomes tender through slow, gentle simmering.
Dried flour
Coats the slices and helps thicken the cooking liquid into a light sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dish its sharp, tangy flavour.
Coarse brown sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and body to the cooking liquid as it softens.

The step that matters

Simmer gently over low heat. Ox heart is a dense, muscular cut. Gentle heat lets its connective tissue break down slowly, while a rapid boil would toughen the meat and reduce the liquid too quickly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, sugar, vinegar. 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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