Skip to main content
Main

To Roast an Ox Heart, or Calf's Heart

A roasted ox or calf heart stuffed with veal, served with gravy and boiled potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and potato 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 Calf's Heart

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the heart

  1. Cut off the pipe and any tough parts from the top of the heart.

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

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

  4. Dry the heart thoroughly, including inside the holes.

Stuff and roast

  1. Stuff the heart with veal stuffing and tie a greased piece of paper over the top.

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

  3. Roast 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. Butter + potatotop 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. Currant + potatotop 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, becoming tender with slow roasting.
Veal stuffing
Fills the cavity, adding moisture and flavour as the heart cooks.
Dripping
Basting fat that promotes browning and a glossy, rich surface.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat to the finished heart.

The step that matters

Drying the heart before stuffing and roasting. Moisture left on the surface and inside the cavities steams rather than browns the meat, and water trapped under the stuffing can dilute flavour and slow browning. Thorough drying helps the outside brown well during roasting.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes