Name: Beef Heart
Ingredients: 1 beef heart; stale bread for stuffing; gravy

Why it works: Beef and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,032 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Beef Heart

Ingredients

1 beef heart
stale bread for stuffing
gravy

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Wash the beef heart carefully.
Stuff it with a dressing made from stale bread.

Roast and serve

Roast the stuffed heart at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours.
Serve with gravy thickened with some of the stuffing.

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.

Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,032 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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 carries the stuffing while it roasts.
Stale bread: Makes the stuffing dressing, absorbing moisture and adding a soft, bready texture.
Gravy: Adds moisture and savoury flavour to the finished slices.

“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.