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Tripe

A stew of tripe simmered in milk with salt, sugar, mustard, and thickened with cornflour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Tripe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the tripe in cold water and cut it into small squares, leaving little fat.

Make the stew

  1. In a stewpan, combine the milk, salt, sugar, and mustard, then add the tripe.

  2. Bring to a boil, skimming carefully, then reduce heat and simmer for 3 to 3.5 hours, stirring frequently.

  3. Mix the cornflour with a little cold milk to a smooth paste and stir it into the stewpan.

  4. Simmer for an additional 5 minutes, then serve on a hot dish with the sauce poured over it.

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. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sugar + mustardtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Milk + mustardtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Tripe
Provides the main body of the stew, becoming tender through long, gentle simmering.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds creaminess as it reduces.
Cornflour
Thickens the milky liquid into a smooth sauce when heated.

The step that matters

Adding the cornflour paste. Cornflour must be mixed smooth with cold milk first, then stirred in; added dry or lumpy it clumps and never thickens evenly. Starch thickens only once heated, so a brief final simmer sets the sauce.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar. 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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