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Stewed Tripe and Onions

A stew of tripe simmered with onions, milk, and flour, seasoned with salt and pepper, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Stewed Tripe and Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tripe

  1. Wash the tripe well in warm water.

  2. Place it in a pan with plenty of cold water and heat until very hot, but do not boil.

  3. Pour away the water, scrape the tripe until clean, then return it to a pan of cold water.

  4. Allow to simmer for 6 to 9 hours until tender.

Make the stew

  1. Pour off the liquid, cut the tripe into neat pieces, and place in a saucepan with milk and sliced onions.

  2. Simmer for 1 hour.

  3. Blend flour with a little cold milk, pour in the milk from the tripe, and add salt and pepper to taste.

  4. Return to the pan and stir until it boils.

Serve

  1. Serve neatly and garnish with toasted bread.

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 + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

Milk and flour 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
Is the main ingredient, becoming tender through long, gentle simmering.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid of the stew and gives it a mild, rich flavour.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften in the milk.
Flour
Thickens the milky liquid into a smooth sauce when it boils.

The step that matters

Return to the pan and stir until it boils. Flour thickens milk only once it reaches a boil, and stirring keeps it smooth. Stopping early leaves a thin sauce, while uneven heating can make lumps.

Swap the onion

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

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

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