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Creamed Tripe

A stew of tripe cooked with butter, flour, salt, cayenne, nutmeg, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Creamed Tripe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tripe

  1. Prepare the tripe as directed.

  2. Cut the tripe into small pieces.

Make the sauce and cook

  1. In a stew pan, heat the butter.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth.

  3. Mix in the salt, cayenne, nutmeg, cream, and tripe.

  4. Cook for five minutes.

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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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, giving it a chewy, substantial texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and melts with the flour to start the thickened base.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a smooth sauce as its starch absorbs liquid when heated.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, creamy body.

The step that matters

Add the flour and stir until smooth. Flour must be fully mixed into the melted butter before the cream goes in. If it clumps, the starch cannot disperse evenly, and the sauce will turn lumpy rather than smooth.

“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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