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To Roast Beef Heart

A roasted beef heart stuffed with dressing, served with gravy and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and turkey work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 248 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

To Roast Beef Heart

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the beef heart and open it to remove the ventricles.

  2. Soak the heart in cold water until the blood is discharged.

Stuff and roast

  1. Wipe the heart dry and stuff it with dressing.

  2. Roast the heart for about 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with gravy thickened with some stuffing and a glass of wine.

  2. It is also nice hashed and served 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. Beef + turkeytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together248 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Wine + curranttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Beef + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethylphenol (must).

  4. Turkey + curranttop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together68 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Turkey + winetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together70 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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 meat of the dish, which becomes tender and juicy when roasted slowly.
Dressing
Fills the cavity, adding moisture and flavor to the heart as it roasts.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savory richness to the sliced meat.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity that cut through the rich, dense meat.

The step that matters

Soaking the heart until the blood is discharged. Residual blood left in the muscle can give a strong, metallic taste and a reddish, bloody look after cooking. Thorough soaking draws it out, so the meat roasts cleaner in flavor and appearance.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, turkey, wine):

  1. Grapefits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, turkey, wine. 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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