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To Roast Beef Heart

A roasted beef heart stuffed with bread crumbs, herbs, and spices, served with butter, vinegar, gravy, or currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

To Roast Beef Heart

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Wash the beef heart thoroughly and clean all blood from the pipes.

  2. Parboil the heart in boiling water for 10 to 15 minutes. Drain the water from the heart.

  3. Prepare stuffing with bread crumbs, minced suet or butter, sweet marjoram, thyme, parsley, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  4. Stuff the heart with the mixture.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the heart in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C), basting well with butter.

  2. Serve with melted butter and vinegar, or with 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. Marjoram + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Marjoram + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Marjoram + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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 slow moist cooking and dry roasting at the surface.
Bread crumbs
Absorb fat and juices in the stuffing, keeping it moist and giving it body.
Suet or butter
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and carries flavour through the roasting.
Butter
Basting fat that promotes browning and a golden, savoury crust on the outside.

The step that matters

Parboiling and draining the heart. Parboiling firms the muscle and removes surface blood and impurities before stuffing. Draining well keeps excess water from diluting the stuffing and steaming the heart instead of roasting it.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, butter, marjoram, thyme, parsley, pepper):

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, butter, marjoram, thyme, parsley, pepper. 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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