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To Roast an Ox Heart, or Califs Heart

A roasted ox or calf heart stuffed with veal, served with gravy, potatoes, and optional butter or currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Roast an Ox Heart, or Califs Heart

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the pipe and ears from the top of the heart.

  2. Soak the heart in cold water for 30 minutes and wash out the clotted blood.

  3. Place the heart in very hot water or boil it for 15 minutes to clean it.

  4. Wipe the heart dry, including the inside.

Roast

  1. Stuff the heart with veal stuffing and cover the top with greased paper.

  2. Hang the heart point down over a gentle fire, basting with sweet dripping every 10 to 15 minutes.

  3. Cook for 20 minutes per pound, allowing more time than for veal or pork.

Serve

  1. Serve in a hot dish with rich brown gravy and boiled potatoes.

  2. Optionally, pour melted butter over the heart or serve with 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. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Veal + potatotop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Veal + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Potato + curranttop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together110 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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 dish and provides dense, rich meat that becomes tender with slow cooking.
Veal stuffing
Fills the cavity, adding moisture and flavour as the heart cooks and keeping its shape.
Sweet dripping
Basting fat that keeps the surface moist and promotes gentle browning as it cooks.
Rich brown gravy
Adds moisture and savoury depth to the sliced heart at the table.

The step that matters

Cleaning the heart before cooking. Soaking and boiling remove clotted blood and impurities. Skipping or shortening this leaves off flavours and dark clots in the meat, and wiping it dry afterwards helps it brown rather than steam.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, potato, butter):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, potato, butter. 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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