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SHEEP'S HEARTS, BAKED (another way)
Stuff the hearts as before, cover with bacon, put them into boiling water, and simmer gently until done enough. Take them up, let them cool, sprinkle a little pepper and salt over them, and cover each one with good pastry. Brush them over with yolk of egg, and sprinkle vermicelli loosely upon them. Bake in a well-heated oven. When the pastry is done enough, serve the hearts on a hot dish, and send brown gravy to table in a tureen. Time to boil the hearts, about three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, 10d. each. Sufficient, two hearts for three persons.
A two-stage dish: the hearts are stuffed and simmered, then wrapped in pastry and baked. Most of the work is in the first stage, and the pastry is essentially a crust and a garnish.
- "Stuff the hearts as before"Cassell's is referring back to its preceding sheep's heart recipe for the stuffing. Any bread-and-herb stuffing works; pack it loosely, as it swells during the simmer.
- Preparing the heartsLamb or sheep's hearts need the ventricles opened out, the clotted blood rinsed away, and the tough arterial tubes and any surface membrane trimmed off. A soak in cold salted water for an hour draws out remaining blood and is worth doing before stuffing.
- Securing the stuffingThe original does not say how to close the hearts. Sew the opening with kitchen twine or fasten it with a skewer, then wrap the bacon around and tie it in place, or the filling will drift out into the water.
- Three-quarters of an hourThat is a fair simmer for a lamb's heart, which is dense working muscle rather than offal in the liver sense. It should be tender enough to slice cleanly; if resistant, give it another fifteen to twenty minutes, since the later baking is only long enough to cook pastry.
- "A well-heated oven"Read this as a hot oven, roughly 400-425F/200-220C, hot enough to set and brown shortcrust in twenty to twenty-five minutes. The hearts are already cooked and only need heating through, so a slower oven would dry them while the pastry sat pale.
- Vermicelli on the crustThis is dry vermicelli broken into short lengths and scattered on the egg-washed pastry, where it toasts to a rough golden coat. It is decorative only, and it scorches easily; watch the last five minutes.
- The gravyNo gravy method is given. A plain brown gravy built on the strained cooking liquid, reduced and thickened with a little browned flour, is in keeping and wastes nothing.
- Yield and costTwo hearts for three people, as stated, which is generous by modern portions; one heart each is a substantial main course. The 10d. apiece marks this as cheap butcher's meat dressed up for a family dinner.
Sheep's and lamb's hearts belonged to the thrifty end of Victorian butchery, and Cassell's gives them several treatments precisely because they were cheap, plentiful and needed help. The trick here is the pastry: encasing a boiled, stuffed heart in crust and glazing it turns an offal dish into something that can be carried to table whole and carved, a domestic echo of the raised pies and coffin-crusts of earlier English cookery. The scattered vermicelli is a period flourish found on savoury pies and croquettes alike, valued for the rough browned surface it gave.