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Stuffing for Heart

A stuffed heart baked with bread crumbs, suet, egg, parsley, pepper, salt, onion, ketchup, flour, and bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stuffing for 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 the heart

  1. Wash the heart. Dry the heart.

  2. Mix bread crumbs, suet, egg, parsley, pepper, and salt in a bowl.

  3. Stuff the heart with the mixture. Sew the heart closed.

Roast and make the hash

  1. Roast the heart at 400°F (200°C) for 30 to 45 minutes, depending on size.

  2. Parboil the lights and half the liver. Mince the parboiled lights and half the liver finely.

  3. Stew the minced lights and liver in their cooking liquid with onion, pepper, salt, ketchup, and a little flour for 30 minutes.

Fry the liver and serve

  1. Slice the remaining liver. Dust the sliced liver with flour.

  2. Fry the floured liver with bacon slices.

  3. Serve the heart in the center of a hot dish, surrounded by the hash and garnished with liver and bacon.

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

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

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ketchup + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together around the heart.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing body and structure.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich during roasting.
Flour
Dusts the liver and thickens the stewed hash as it cooks.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the stewed hash.

The step that matters

Roast the heart at 400°F (200°C) for 30 to 45 minutes, depending on size.. Heat must reach the centre of the thick muscle without drying the outside. Judging by size, not just time, helps keep the meat tender and the stuffing cooked through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, parsley, pepper, ketchup, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, parsley, pepper, ketchup, flour. 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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