Home › The Principles of Cookery › Sheep's Hearts, Baked
Sheep's Hearts, Baked
Prepare and stuff the hearts as for roasting, and skewer thin slices of fat bacon over them. Put them with the broad end downwards in a dripping-tin, sprinkle a little pepper and salt over them, pour a pint of broth round them, and bake in a well-heated oven. Baste frequently. Take up the hearts, and keep them hot. Skim and strain the gravy, boil it quickly till it is reduced one-half, thicken with a spoonful of brown thickening, and flavour with store sauce. Place the hearts on a dish, strain the sauce over, and serve. Send red currant jelly to table as an accompaniment. If liked, an onion can be stewed in the gravy with the hearts. Time to bake, two hours. Probable cost, sheep's hearts, 10d. each. Sufficient, two hearts for three persons.
A plain braise-in-the-oven treatment of an organ meat that most butchers will still order for you. The recipe leans on two conventions the book explains elsewhere true "as for roasting" preparation and "brown thickening" so those need filling in first.
- Preparing the hearts"As for roasting" means splitting each heart down one side and cutting away the valves, tough internal membranes and any clotted blood, then washing and drying well; some cooks soak them in cold water first. Sheep's hearts are larger than lamb's, so two will weigh rather more than a pound.
- The stuffingA sage-and-onion or veal forcemeat suits: breadcrumbs, suet or butter, chopped onion, herbs, bound with egg. Pack it loosely and secure the opening with a skewer or a few stitches of kitchen string, or it will wash out into the gravy.
- Oven heatThe book gives no temperatures; "a well-heated oven" indicates a brisk oven. For a two-hour bake in broth, use a moderate heat so the liquid reduces slowly rather than boiling away.
- Dripping-tin and liquidA dripping-tin is a shallow roasting pan. A pint here is an imperial pint, 20 fl oz, so use about 2 1/2 cups of broth. Loosely tent with foil for the middle hour; hearts are very lean muscle and will dry out uncovered even with basting.
- Brown thickeningA cooked roux of flour browned in butter or dripping until nut-coloured, of the sort such books direct be made up in advance. A spoonful into the reduced gravy is the equivalent of about 1 tablespoon each butter and flour, cooked to a deep tan before whisking in.
- Store sauceA keeping sauce, either home-bottled or proprietary: Worcestershire, mushroom ketchup or Harvey's. A teaspoon or two is enough; it is there for salt and depth, not to dominate.
- DonenessTwo hours at moderate heat is right for tenderness rather than safety. Heart is dense and tightens if cooked fast and hot; the goal is a texture that slices cleanly, so test with a skewer and give it longer if it still resists.
- ServingTwo hearts for three people, sliced across the grain so each portion gets stuffing. The red currant jelly is not optional decoration its sharpness cuts the strong iron flavour, as it does with mutton and venison.
Heart sits at the cheap end of the Victorian offal trade, and Cassell's price note 10d. a heart places it among the cheaper items a household running on a fixed weekly budget might buy. The treatment here is the standard English answer to lean, strongly flavoured meat: stuff it to add fat and seasoning from within, bard it with bacon to add fat from without, and bake it slowly in broth so the drippings become the sauce. Serving red currant jelly alongside follows the same logic that pairs it with mutton and game, and the closing suggestion of an onion stewed in the gravy is the sort of optional economy that runs through the whole book. Lamb and sheep's hearts remained common butcher's-shop items in Britain well into the twentieth century, falling out of general use only as offal consumption declined after the Second World War.