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Sheep’s Hearts with Raisins

A dish of roasted sheep hearts stuffed with bread crumbs, raisins, butter, salt, and pepper, served with gravy flavored with currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sheep’s Hearts with Raisins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hearts

  1. Soak the hearts in cold water or under a running tap.

  2. Trim the hearts and cut away the pipes.

Stuff and tie

  1. Fill each heart with a mixture of bread crumbs, raisins, butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Tie a greased paper or use muslin to secure the filling.

  3. Skewer thin slices of fat bacon around the hearts.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the hearts and serve with thickened gravy flavored 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  4. Bread + raisintop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,111 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sheep's hearts
Serve as the main meat, which is the body of the dish.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the filling body so it holds its shape.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture that contrasts with the rich meat.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the filling, keeping it moist during roasting.
Fat bacon (in the method)
Bastes the hearts with fat as they roast, keeping the lean meat moist and adding flavor.

The step that matters

Securing the filling before roasting. Heart cavities hold a loose stuffing that expands and can escape during roasting if not tightly tied or skewered. Keeping the filling inside helps it cook through and keeps the meat moist.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, pepper, currant):

  1. Red currantfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, pepper, currant. 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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