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Tripe for Invalids

Tripe for Invalids is a slow‑cooked tripe and lean beef stew with mustard, sugar, salt, and a corn flour thickener.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,028 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Tripe for Invalids

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Wash the tripe and cut it into squares, removing almost all the fat.

  2. Cut the lean beef into squares similarly.

Stew

  1. Place both meats in a stew pan with cold water, mustard, sugar, and salt.

  2. Bring to a boil, skim carefully, then reduce heat and simmer for three hours.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix corn flour with cold water to form a smooth paste.

  2. Stir the paste into the sauce and boil gently for a few minutes.

  3. Serve the meat on a hot dish and pour the sauce 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. Beef + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,028 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + corntop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together463 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Tripe
Becomes tender through long simmering, forming the main body of the stew.
Lean beef
Adds meaty flavour and substance while the long simmer softens its fibres.
Corn flour
Starch that thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce when heated.

The step that matters

Skimming after the boil. Skimming removes foam and loose fat that would otherwise cloud the sauce and give it a greasy taste. Starting the simmer only after the surface is clean keeps the broth clear.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, corn, flour. 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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