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Lamb's Hearts, Fricasseed
Take two lamb's hearts, lay them in cold water, and fill the cavity with veal stuffing (see VEAL FORCEMEAT), flour them well, and bake in a moderate oven for three-quarters of an hour. Then cut them into neat slices; thicken and brown the gravy; lay the pieces in a pan, and stew gently for a quarter of an hour. Arrange neatly on a dish with slices of fried tomatoes and a few chopped mushrooms.
A two-stage dish: the hearts are stuffed and roasted whole, then sliced and finished in their own thickened gravy. The Victorian instruction to "bake" means an uncovered roast in a dish, not a covered braise.
- Trim before stuffingLamb's hearts arrive with a cap of fat, the tops of the great vessels and internal membranes dividing the chambers. Trim away the fat and the membranes and gristle inside so the chambers open out to take the stuffing, then rinse and lay in cold water as directed, which will also draw out remaining blood.
- "A moderate oven"Conventionally reckoned at about 350F/175C, though the book gives no figure. Three-quarters of an hour should bring a stuffed heart of moderate size to just cooked through; the stuffing must reach 165F/74C, since veal forcemeat is raw meat.
- Veal forcemeatThe cross-reference points to the book's standard stuffing, which in books of this kind is typically breadcrumbs, suet, chopped ham or veal, lemon zest, herbs and egg to bind. Any well-seasoned sausage or breadcrumb-and-herb stuffing does the same job. Do not pack it tight; it swells.
- Flour them wellThe flour coating browns, and what falls into the roasting juices helps start the gravy; the recipe then calls for it to be thickened and browned further, so expect to scrape the pan, let down with stock, and thicken as needed.
- The second stewingA quarter of an hour of gentle stewing after slicing is the difference between tender and rubbery — heart is dense working muscle and stiffens badly at a boil. Keep the gravy at a bare tremble, and if the slices still resist, give them longer rather than hotter.
- Fried tomatoesThick slices seasoned and fried in dripping or butter until coloured on both sides. Firm, slightly underripe tomatoes hold together where ripe ones collapse.
- YieldTwo hearts serve two generously or three at a table with other dishes. Reckon one heart per hearty eater.
Hearts belong to the great Victorian and Edwardian repertoire of offal cookery, in which the cheaper organ meats carried whole chapters of the household manuals. Lamb's heart in particular was a thrifty-household staple: small, cheap, and shaped by nature into a container, which is why the stuffed-and-roasted treatment is so standard. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, an enormous alphabetical compendium of the late nineteenth century, gives several heart recipes and, in the manner of such books, cross-references the forcemeat rather than repeating it. Calling this a "fricassee" is a loose use of the term: a fricassée is meat cut up and stewed in sauce from the start, and here the stewing comes second, after the roast. The tomatoes are a mark of date: tomatoes moved from suspicion to commonplace in British cooking across the second half of the century, and by the time this book appeared they were unremarkable enough to be a garnish.