Beef Heart

Ingredients

• breadcrumbs
• minced suet or bacon
• thyme
• grated nutmeg
• powdered cloves
• 1 teaspoon of grated lemon rind
• sliced onion
• a bit of carrot
• a bay leaf
• celery leaves

Method

1. 1

   Soak heart in cold water for half an hour, then parboil.

2. 2

   Strain and save liquid for basting.

3. 3

   Enlarge openings with a knife, stuff with breadcrumbs mixed with suet or bacon, seasoned with thyme, nutmeg, cloves, and lemon rind.

4. 4

   Sew up, place in pan with onion, carrot, bay leaf, and celery leaves.

Nutrition per serving

As published

This recipe was extracted from Most for your money cookbook (1938) by Cora Lovisa Brackett Brown, Cora Brown, page 37. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

a bay leaf, tied together. Season with a clove and peppercorns; put the stewpan over the fire for 10 minutes, then pour in i pint of boiling water and 2 pints of vinegar. Simmer until done, salting while cooking. Take the tails out, strain the liquor they have cooked in and boil it until almost reduced to a glaze. Then put the tails back in and warm them up again. Prepare a puree of spinach or a mess of greens such as beets, turnip or poke, pile it in the center of a hot dish, arrange the tails around it, and pour their sauce over all. These are a real delicacy, as are the tails of all animals, from pigs to oxen. The bit of tail our canny packing houses leave on a leg of 72 MOST-FOR-YOUR-MONEY COOK BOOK lamb is a delicious morsel if it is well protected by a thick covering of paper to keep it from drying out while the rest of the leg is roast- ing. And those who have dined on the broad fat tails of Turkish sheep, so prized that centuries of careful breeding have been de- voted to producing them, always come back for more. HAVE A HEART! Pig*s and lamb's hearts are good just cut up and stewed with vegetables and herb seasonings. There should be a browned flour gravy. Or they may be stuffed as follows: For each heart: i small onion, minced, i tablespoons bread crumbs, i tablespoon melted fat, j^ teaspoon sage, salt, pepper, and a dash of cayenne. StuflF, sew up opening and brown heart in fat; then stew in very little water with a carrot and an onion. When tender eat at once. Although beef, lamb and pigs* hearts are both good and cheap, the one that appeals most to us is veal heart. In New York City we pay a nickel apiece for these, and since they weigh around half a pound, that's probably the cheapest solid meat available anywhere. To make the dish economical it's advisable to cook more than enough for one meal, since the cooked meat keeps well and is fine when cold. Let the veal hearts lie in cold water to discharge coagulated blood, wash thoroughly, open up pockets with a knife, trim veins, fill with rich stujffing flavored with onion juice and poultry season- ing, or your own herb mixture, and have that stuffing moist. Sew up, and slowly bake or braise with onion, carrot, herbs, and pepper- corns. If some of them are to be eaten cold, the family will welcome the change if these are stuffed somewhat differently: a little ground liver, or sausagemeat, or leftover poultry, mixed with the crumbs, with slightly different seasoning — and then let the ones so stuffed cool in the gravy, wipe dry, and slice thin. The circular slices with the inner rounds of stuffing are attractive to look at and very palatable. BEEF HEART The heart of every animal is both substantial and tasty, as any- body knows who has fished the chicken heart out of a stew and gobbled it as an appetizer while the cook was making the dumplings. SWELL PICKINGS 73 Heart is as good meat in its way as kidneys or high-priced liver, and the best thing about buying hearts is that there's almost no waste. But being the most active of all muscles, the old and big ones, such as beef, are both lean and dry, so the fat they lack must be supplied in stuffing or in basting sauce, and the dry tough texture must be overcome by long, slow cooking and much basting. Beef heart is especially obdurate, but it is a fine dish, if the cook starts out with some of the courage its consumption was anciently supposed to supply. It tastes something like game and is entirely worthy of being eaten with currant or grape jelly. Three hours should be allowed for braising, or two for roasting. A fireless cooker does this dish at little cost. First soak the heart in cold water for half an hour, then parboil it; strain and save the liquid to use in basting. Enlarge the natural openings or pockets with a knife, and stuff with breadcrumbs which have been wet and squeezed dry, mixed with minced suet or bacon, and seasoned with thyme, grated nutmeg or an infinitesimal amount of powdered cloves, and a tea- spoon of grated lemon rind (the yellow outside only). Sew up, and place in the pan with a sliced onion, a bit of carrot, a bay leajf and celery leaves

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.