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To Boil Tripe

Tripe soup made by boiling tripe with onions, butter, flour, cream, vinegar, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

To Boil Tripe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tripe

  1. Wash the tripe in warm water.

  2. Trim off all the fat from the tripe.

  3. Cut the tripe into small pieces.

  4. Boil the tripe in enough water to cover for five hours.

  5. After four hours, pour off the water.

  6. Season the tripe with salt and pepper.

  7. Add equal parts milk and water to the tripe.

  8. Boil the tripe for one hour in the milk and water mixture.

Make the onion sauce

  1. Boil ten or a dozen onions until soft.

  2. Drain and mash the onions.

  3. In a clean saucepan, melt a bit of butter.

  4. Roll the butter in flour.

  5. Add the mashed onions to the butter-flour mixture.

  6. Add a splash of cream or milk to the mixture and let the mixture boil.

Serve

  1. Add the mixture to the tripe just before serving.

  2. Serve the tripe with pepper, vinegar, and mustard.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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
Main ingredient that becomes tender and gives the soup its chewy, meaty body after long boiling.
Onions
Softened and mashed, they add sweetness and a thick, savoury body to the sauce.
Butter
Fat that carries the flour and gives the sauce a rich, smooth base.
Flour
Cooked with butter, it thickens the sauce by absorbing liquid as it heats.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, softening the tripe's flavour and texture.

The step that matters

Boil the tripe for five hours. Tripe is tough connective tissue. Long, gentle boiling breaks it down slowly, so cutting the time short leaves it chewy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, milk, butter, flour, cream, vinegar, mustard):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, milk, butter, flour, cream, vinegar, 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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