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Irish Tripe

A stew of tripe simmered in milk and water, flavored with onions, mustard, and optional lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Irish Tripe

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tripe

  1. Stew the tripe pieces in milk, water, and salt for 1 hour.

  2. Add onions and boil until tender.

  3. Place the tripe on a dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Thicken some of the sauce with flour and butter.

  2. Mix in mustard and the drained, sieved onions.

  3. Heat the sauce and pour it over the tripe.

  4. Add lemon juice if desired.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Provides the main body of the dish, becoming tender after slow stewing in liquid.
Milk
Adds richness and a mild sweetness to the stewing liquid that becomes the sauce.
Onions
Soften during boiling and, sieved, add body and sweetness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce, giving it a smooth, coating consistency when combined with butter.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and combines with flour to form a thickening roux.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and a pungent aroma that cuts through the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken some of the sauce with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked with butter so its starch swells evenly into the liquid. Adding flour without cooking it first can leave lumps and a raw, pasty taste.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, onion, flour, butter, mustard):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, onion, flour, butter, mustard. 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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