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To Roast Beef Heart with Sage and Onions

A roasted beef heart stuffed with onion, sage, and breadcrumbs, served with brown gravy and apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Roast Beef Heart with Sage and Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak, clean, and trim the beef heart.

  2. Make a stuffing with the onion, sage, breadcrumbs, pepper, and salt.

  3. Fill the heart with the stuffing and sew it up.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the heart before the fire for 4 hours, basting frequently.

  2. Serve with good brown gravy and apple sauce.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Sage + appletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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 is cooked through as the meat that holds the stuffing.
Onion
Adds sweetness and moisture to the stuffing as it softens during boiling and roasting.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb juices and give the stuffing a soft, bound texture.
Sage
Contributes a savoury, aromatic herbal flavour to the stuffing.
Butter
Rubbed over the surface to add fat, helping the outside brown during roasting.

The step that matters

Roasting the stuffed heart for 4 hours. Beef heart is dense and lean, so it needs long, slow heat to become tender. Frequent basting keeps the surface moist and prevents the outside from drying and hardening before the centre is cooked.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, sage, pepper, butter, sauce. 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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