Skip to main content
Main

Tripe, with Tomatoes and Spinach

Tripe cooked in tomato sauce with spinach, served with optional poached eggs and fried bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Tripe, with Tomatoes and Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Press the contents of the canned tomatoes through a colander into a saucepan.

  2. Add salt and pepper after the pulp has boiled.

  3. Squeeze in the lemon juice.

  4. Add the chopped, scalded onion.

  5. Boil for 10 minutes.

  6. Thicken the mixture with flour and butter.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the tripe and cook for about 15 minutes.

  2. Serve with cooked spinach around the dish.

  3. Top each bed of spinach with a poached egg.

  4. Add fried bacon rolls in between.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Pepper + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Tomato + spinachtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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 and becomes tender after simmering in the sauce.
Canned tomatoes
Provide the liquid base, acidity and fresh tomato flavour of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the tomato liquid into a smoother, more cohesive sauce when cooked with butter.
Butter
Adds richness and helps make the flour thickening smooth and glossy.
Spanish onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the tomato sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked into the butter and hot liquid to prevent lumps and a raw starchy taste. Stirring well while the sauce is at a simmer lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, lemon, flour, butter, spinach, egg):

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, lemon, flour, butter, spinach, egg. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes