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Beef Heart Baked or Roasted

A roasted beef heart stuffed with bread, butter, and thyme, served with a lemon‑butter gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beef Heart Baked or Roasted

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the heart

  1. Cut the beef heart in half and remove the strings from the inside.

  2. Wash the heart with warm water and rub the inside with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Fill the heart with a stuffing made of crumbled bread, softened butter, water, and optional thyme.

  4. Tie the heart together with string and rub the outside with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  5. Dot the outside with bits of butter and dredge with flour.

Roast and make the gravy

  1. Place the heart on a trivet or muffin rings in a roasting pan and add 1 pint of water for basting.

  2. Roast in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 1 hour, turning and basting frequently.

  3. When done, remove the heart and add lemon slices and a bit of butter dredged in flour to the pan.

  4. Let the lemon brown, then add a small cup of boiling water, stir until smooth, and serve in a gravy tureen.

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. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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 that is stuffed, roasted and sliced for serving.
Bread
Soaks up butter and moisture in the stuffing, keeping it tender and moist.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the stuffing and browns the outside of the heart.
Flour
Dredged on the outside and in the butter for the pan, helping browning and thickening the gravy.

The step that matters

Roasting and basting the heart. Beef heart is dense and lean, so it can dry out or toughen if overcooked. Frequent basting with the pan liquid keeps the surface moist while the flour and fat promote browning.

Swap the thyme

The recipe marks thyme as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, bread, butter, flour, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Thymethe original
  4. Sagefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, bread, butter, flour, lemon. 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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