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Heart, Bullock's, Hashed
Take the remains of a bullock's heart, and cut into neat slices. Take also a cupful of gravy, that which was served with the heart will answer excellently; mix with it a quarter of a pint of port, claret, or ale, and thicken it with a little flour, mixed smoothly in a small quantity of water. Let it boil for a few minutes, then dissolve a table-spoonful of red currant jelly in it, put in the slices of heart, and, when these are heated through, serve immediately, with toasted sippets to garnish the dish. The gravy must not boil after the slices of heart are added. Time, half an hour. Probable cost, exclusive of the cold meat and wine, 3d. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A leftovers dish: cold roast or braised bullock's heart resurrected in a sweet-sharp wine gravy. The whole thing hangs on gentle heat.
- Do not let it boilThe original adds the warning as a separate, emphatic line, and for good reason. Heart is dense muscle with very little fat, and reheating it in boiling liquid quickly turns the slices grey and tough. Bring the sauce to a simmer, take it off the direct heat, then slide the meat in and let it warm through for two or three minutes.
- Slice cold, not warmChill the cooked heart thoroughly before cutting. Cold meat slices thinly and cleanly across the grain; warm heart tears. Thin slices also come up to temperature faster, which is the whole point here.
- A quarter of a pintImperial measure, so 5 fl oz, a scant two-thirds of a US cup. The cupful of gravy is likewise generous by modern reckoning, call it 8 fl oz. The sauce should coat the slices, not drown them.
- Red currant jellyStill sold, and worth seeking out rather than substituting. It brings acidity as well as sweetness, which is what cuts the iron-heavy flavour of heart. A tablespoon in roughly 13 fl oz of liquid is the proportion the recipe implies; taste before adding more.
- SippetsTriangles or fingers of bread toasted or fried crisp, arranged around the rim of the dish. They exist to soak up gravy and to give the plate some crunch against soft meat. Cut them from a firm white loaf and toast them dry, or fry in beef dripping if you have it.
- ThickeningThe flour-and-water slurry is a period shortcut and it needs a genuine few minutes at a simmer to lose its raw taste, before the jelly and the meat go in. A beurre manié whisked into the hot gravy gives a glossier result with the same effort.
- The winePort, claret or ale each pull the dish in a different direction: port sweetest, claret sharpest, ale maltiest and, in period, the cheapest of the three. Any of them works, but reduce the currant jelly slightly if using port.
- Time and yieldThe stated half hour presumably covers slicing and gravy-making, since the meat itself wants only a few minutes. Serves three or four as written, and the original's threepence is expressly "exclusive of the cold meat and wine".
Bullock's heart was among the cheapest butcher's meat in Victorian Britain, sold for pence and generally stuffed and roasted or braised whole, then eaten cold or hashed over the following days. This is really a lesson in the reheating of cold meat, a subject nineteenth-century household manuals treated with some seriousness: a large joint or offal roast had to feed a family across several meals in a kitchen with no refrigeration, and the second appearance had to look like a dish rather than scraps. The sweetened wine gravy with red currant jelly is a standard Victorian treatment for strong, dark, lean meat, close to the sauces served with venison, hare and mutton, and it does the same work here of softening a pronounced mineral flavour. Heart fell out of general British eating in the second half of the twentieth century along with most offal, though it has returned to restaurant menus under the banner of nose-to-tail cooking.