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To Boil Tripe

Boiled tripe served with pepper, vinegar, mustard, and a creamy onion sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Boil Tripe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tripe

  1. Wash the tripe in warm water and trim off all the fat.

  2. Cut the tripe into small pieces and boil in enough water to cover it for five hours.

  3. After four hours, pour off the water, season the tripe with pepper and salt, and add equal parts milk and water.

  4. Boil the tripe in the milk and water for one hour.

Make the onion sauce

  1. In a separate saucepan, boil the onions until soft, then drain and mash them.

  2. Wipe out the saucepan, add the mashed onions with a bit of butter rolled in flour and ⅓ cup of cream or milk.

  3. Let the mixture boil, then add it to the tripe just before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve with pepper, vinegar, and mustard.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tripe
Is the main ingredient, becoming tender after long simmering in water and then milk.
Onions
Soften and mash into a sweet, smooth base for the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the onion sauce and adds richness and body.
Flour
Thickens the onion sauce when cooked with the butter.
Cream or milk
Adds creaminess and moisture to the onion sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the tripe for the full time. Tripe is tough and needs long, gentle simmering to become tender. Stopping early or boiling too hard can leave it chewy or tough, so the timing must be followed closely.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, milk, butter, flour, cream, vinegar, mustard):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, milk, butter, flour, cream, vinegar, mustard. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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