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Tripe and Onions

Tripe and onions is a stew of tripe simmered with milk, onions, flour, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tripe and Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tripe

  1. Wash the tripe in hot water and cut it into neat pieces.

  2. Place the tripe in a saucepan with the milk and finely chopped onions.

  3. Simmer until tender, about 45 minutes, then remove the tripe.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Moisten the flour with a little cold water or milk.

  2. Gradually add the thickening to the milk and onions, boiling and stirring constantly.

  3. Reheat the tripe in the pan, season with pepper and salt, and serve in a hot dish.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + oniontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Thickens the milk and onion liquid into a smooth sauce when boiled with stirring.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that cooks the tripe and becomes the thickened sauce.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma to the milk and sauce as they cook.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture to the milk. Flour must be smoothly moistened first, then added gradually while boiling and stirring constantly. Otherwise lumps form because starch granules clump before they can disperse and thicken evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, pepper. 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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