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To Roast A Beef Heart
Open the heart sufficiently to remove the ventricles, then soak it in water until the blood is discharged. Parboil the heart until nearly tender. Prepare a force-meat of bread crumbs and salt fat pork chopped fine; season the force-meat with pepper, sweet marjoram, parsley, salt and a littte chopped onion; stuff the heart with the force-meat, and secure the opening with small skewers; cut thin slices of fat ham and lay in the pan with about two tablespoonfuls of hot water; then put the heart in the pan and baste with the gravy until done. Serve with currant jelly, or horseradish grated, and a few slices of lemon.
A whole beef heart is dense, lean muscle, and the recipe's silence on oven temperature and time is the main gap to fill. Order the heart from a butcher; it usually arrives already trimmed of the heavy vessels and fat, which saves most of the opening-out work described here.
- The hinge: cook it low or cook it briefly, never in betweenHeart is dense, lean working muscle, tough where the valves and cords sit but without the fat that forgives slow cooking elsewhere. The parboil plus a slow roast, covered, around 325F keeps it tender; an hour at a high heat will make it grey and grainy.
- Removing the ventriclesWhat is meant is splitting the heart open and cutting away the tough valve tissue, tendon-like cords and the interior fat, leaving a cavity you can stuff. Trim the silverskin from the outside as well.
- Soaking and parboilingTwo to three hours in several changes of cold water is enough to draw the blood; overnight in the refrigerator is easier. "Parboil until nearly tender" means about 45 minutes to an hour at a bare simmer for a 3-4 lb heart.
- Force-meatSimply stuffing. Salt fat pork is salt pork, sold in slabs; rinse it before chopping or the stuffing will be too salty for the added salt called for. Unsmoked bacon or fresh pork fatback works, in which case keep the salt.
- Oven and timeThe recipe gives no oven and no temperature; it only says to baste 'until done'. Roast at 325-350F, allowing about 1 to 1 1/4 hours after parboiling, covered for most of it, uncovered at the end to colour the outside.
- Two tablespoons of water is not enoughThat amount will scorch long before the roast is done. Use about half a cup, top it up as it evaporates, and cover the pan; the ham slices underneath render and give you something to baste with.
- Securing the openingSmall skewers work, but butcher's twine laced through the edges holds better through an hour of roasting and does not tear the meat as it contracts.
- Yield and servingA 3-4 lb heart serves six to eight. Slice thinly across the grain, as you would a flank steak; cut with the grain it eats tough no matter how well it was cooked. The currant jelly or horseradish is not optional garnish, it cuts the strong iron flavour.
Beef heart belongs to the era when a household bought a beast, or a share of one, and expected to use all of it. In American and British cookbooks through the nineteenth century the heart is commonly treated as a small roasting joint, stuffed and basted like a bird, which is why the force-meat, the skewers and the sweet marjoram here would look at home in a recipe for roast fowl. The currant jelly and grated horseradish follow the same logic as their use with venison and boiled beef: a sharp or sweet-sharp condiment against a dark, strongly flavoured meat. Heart largely faded from mainstream American cooking in the decades after the Second World War, as offal fell out of favour at the family table, though it survives in butcher-driven cooking and in dishes such as Peruvian anticuchos. It is worth noting how little apology the book offers: no argument for economy, no reassurance about the flavour, just the assumption that the cook knew what to do with a heart when one came into the kitchen.