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Beef Heart Baked or Roasted

A roasted or baked beef heart stuffed with bread and butter, seasoned with salt, pepper, and optional 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.

  2. Remove the strings from the inside.

  3. Wash the heart with warm water.

  4. Rub the inside with salt and pepper.

  5. Fill the heart with a stuffing made of bread and butter moistened with water, seasoned with salt, pepper, and thyme if desired.

  6. Tie the heart together with string.

  7. Rub the outside with salt and pepper.

  8. Dot the outside with bits of butter.

  9. Dredge the outside with flour.

Roast

  1. Place the heart on a trivet or muffin rings in a roasting pan.

  2. Add 1 pint of water to the pan.

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

Make the lemon gravy and serve

  1. Remove the heart.

  2. Cut the lemon into thick slices.

  3. Add the lemon slices to the pan with a bit of butter.

  4. Dredge the lemon slices with a teaspoon of flour.

  5. Let it brown.

  6. Add a small teaspoon of boiling water. Stir until smooth.

  7. 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; its dense muscle becomes tender and juicy with slow roasting and basting.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffing and surface, and helps the exterior brown.
Bread
Soaked with water and butter, it forms a moist stuffing that fills the cavity and absorbs juices.
Flour
Dredged on the surface, it helps the exterior brown and thickens the pan juices into gravy.
Lemon
Its sliced acidity brightens the pan gravy and balances the richness of the meat.

The step that matters

Dredging the lemon slices with flour and browning them. Flour needs enough fat and heat to brown without scorching; cooking it briefly in the pan drippers before adding liquid lets it thicken the gravy smoothly, while lumps form if liquid is added too soon or too fast.

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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