Stuffed Heart
Take a beef's or sheep's or veal's heart, wash deeply and thoroughly so as to remove all blood, make the two cells into one by cutting through the partition with a long, sharp knife, being careful not to cut through to the outside; make a stuffing of bread crumbs same as for roast turkey, fill the cavity, cover with greased paper or cloth to secure stuffing, and bake in a deep pan with plenty of water, for two hours or longer, basting and turning often, as the upper part particularly is apt to get dry. While heart is roasting, put the valves or "deaf ears," which must be cut off after washing, into a saucepan, with pint of cold water and a sliced onion. Let simmer slowly one hour; melt in saucepan tablespoon of butter, add a tablespoon flour, then the strained liquor from valves, and serve as gravy.
A braise disguised as a roast: the pan of water and the covering paper are what keep a very lean, hard-working muscle from turning to leather. The original assumes you know your stove, so a few numbers are worth filling in.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. This is a covered, wet cook, so 325-350F is right; anything hotter dries the exposed top faster than basting can fix.
- Which heart, and how muchA beef heart runs 3-4 lb and feeds six to eight; veal is about 1 lb; lamb hearts are around a quarter pound, a mature sheep's heart rather larger, and both are usually served one per person. Cooking time scales accordingly - the "two hours or longer" is for beef, and a small lamb heart may be done in about an hour.
- "Deaf ears"The atria, the two floppy upper chambers, along with the valve tissue and the stubs of the great vessels. They are gristly and unpleasant to eat but full of gelatin, which is exactly why the recipe simmers them for stock rather than stuffing them.
- TrimmingBeyond splitting the partition, cut out the hard white valve tissue and any tubes inside the chambers, and pull off the fat cap at the top. Then soak in cold water, changing it once or twice, until it runs clear - the "wash deeply" is about removing clotted blood from the chambers.
- The stuffingThe book's turkey stuffing is a dry bread-crumb dressing with butter and seasoning - salt, pepper, and sage or summer savory - and versions of it are variously enriched with onion or bound with egg. A cup or so fills a beef heart; do not pack it, as the muscle contracts as it cooks.
- Cover, and keep it coveredGreased paper tied on is doing the work of a lid. A sheet of parchment under foil, or simply a covered roasting pan, works better and spares you most of the basting.
- Judge by tenderness, not the clockHeart is dense muscle and passes through a tough stage before collagen breaks down. A skewer should slide in with no resistance; if it still grips at two hours, give it another thirty to sixty minutes with more water in the pan.
- The gravyA tablespoon each of butter and flour will thicken about a cup of the strained valve liquor to a light sauce. Season it - the original never says to - and add the pan juices, which will be better than the stock.
- ServingLet it stand ten minutes, then slice across the grain, no thicker than a quarter inch. Cut with the grain it eats stringy no matter how long it cooked.
Heart sits at the honest end of nineteenth-century American thrift cookery: cheap, lean, and treated here as a small roast for a family table rather than as a curiosity. Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (1877, out of Marysville, Ohio) was compiled from contributions by Methodist churchwomen and reflects a household economy in which a whole beef was broken down locally and every part had to find a use - hence the instruction to simmer the discarded atria for gravy stock instead of throwing them out. The stuffed-and-braised heart is old and widespread: Scottish and northern English cooks did much the same thing, and the Scots dish of stuffed lamb hearts is arguably a surviving relative. The phrase "deaf ears" for the auricles is a folk term whose origin is uncertain.