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Heart, Sheep's, Baked
Wash two or three sheep's hearts in lukewarm water, fill them with veal forcemeat, and skewer them securely. Fasten a rasher of fat bacon round each, place them in a deep dish, and with them a little good stock, and an onion stuck with two cloves. Bake in a moderate oven for two hours. Draw off the gravy. Thicken with a little flour and butter, and flavour it with pepper and salt and a table-spoonful of mushroom or walnut ketchup. Put the hearts on a hot dish, pour the gravy over them, and send red currant jelly with them to table. Probable cost, 8d. each. Sufficient, two for four persons.
A straightforward braise disguised as a roast — the hearts cook in stock in a covered dish, not in dry heat. Everything depends on the meat being properly trimmed and the oven staying low enough that two hours turns the muscle tender rather than tough.
- Buy and trim the heartsSheep's (lamb's) hearts are a butcher or halal-market item, commonly around 5-8 oz each. Split each part-way down, snip out the tough valve membranes, arteries and any clotted blood in the chambers, then rinse - the original's "lukewarm water" presumably serves to loosen the clots. The remaining cavity is the pocket you stuff.
- Moderate oven350F/180C is the usual modern reading of a "moderate oven". Above that the stock reduces away and the hearts tighten; heart is dense working muscle and wants a long, gentle wet cook. Covering the dish with a lid or foil will keep it from drying, though the original does not say the dish was covered.
- Veal forcemeatA period forcemeat of minced veal or veal and suet with breadcrumbs, lemon zest, parsley and egg to bind. Ground veal is scarce and costly now; ground pork, or pork with a little bacon, gives the same texture and richness. Allow about 4 oz stuffing per heart and do not pack it tight — it swells.
- Skewering and baconClose each heart with a small metal skewer or a cocktail stick, or sew it with kitchen twine, or the forcemeat leaches into the gravy. The bacon rasher tied around each is barding: it bastes the lean meat and can be removed and crisped separately before serving.
- Stock level"A little good stock" means enough to come perhaps a third of the way up the hearts, not to submerge them — around a cup for three hearts. Too much and the gravy is thin and needs long reduction at the end.
- ThickeningWork equal parts soft butter and flour into a paste (beurre manié). Off the heat, whisk it into the simmering strained gravy in small pieces, and cook two or three minutes to lose the raw flour taste. About 1 tablespoon each per cup of liquid.
- Walnut and mushroom ketchupNeither is the tomato product. Both were thin, dark, salty, fermented condiments; walnut ketchup is still sold by British specialists. Worcestershire sauce, or mushroom soy with a dash of vinegar, stands in for the same savoury-sour lift.
- Doneness and yieldTwo hours at 350F should give meat a knife enters with mild resistance; the forcemeat should reach 165F/74C at the centre. Two hearts for four people means each is halved or sliced across - serve the slices fanned so the stuffing shows. The "8d. each" is Victorian pence, a reminder that this was cheap meat.
Its cheapness is the point: heart was among the least fashionable parts of a carcass, sold for pennies, and stuffing it with forcemeat was a common way of stretching one small organ across a family. The method - hollow out, stuff, bard with bacon, braise slowly with an onion stuck with cloves - is essentially the same treatment given to a boned bird or a stuffed shoulder, and the clove-studded onion is a long-standing fixture of British and French stock-making. Red currant jelly on the side follows the older English habit of pairing sweet-sharp fruit with sheep and lamb, the same logic that puts mint sauce beside a roast leg. Dishes like this fell out of English home cooking in the later twentieth century as offal lost status, though stuffed lamb's hearts have returned to some restaurant menus.