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To Boil Tripe

A boiled tripe dish seasoned with pepper, salt, onions, butter, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Boil Tripe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tripe

  1. Wash the tripe in warm water and trim off all the fat.

  2. Cut the tripe into small pieces and boil it in enough water to cover it for 5 hours.

  3. After 4 hours, pour off the water, season the tripe with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. Put the tripe into a pot with equal parts milk and water and boil for 1 hour.

Make the onion sauce

  1. Boil the onions in a saucepan until soft, then drain and mash them.

  2. Wipe out the saucepan, add the mashed onions with a bit of butter rolled in flour and ⅓ cup of cream or milk.

  3. Let the mixture boil, then add it to the tripe just before serving.

Serve

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

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Is the main ingredient, providing the chewy texture that long boiling makes tender.
Onions
Mashed and cooked down, they add sweetness and body to the sauce.
Butter and flour
Cooked together, they form a roux that thickens the onion sauce.
Milk
Simmers with the tripe, adding moisture and a mild, creamy flavour.
Cream or milk
Enriches the onion sauce, adding richness and a smoother texture.

The step that matters

Boiling the tripe for the full time. Tripe is tough and must simmer for hours so its connective tissue breaks down into gelatin, giving a tender bite. Stopping early leaves it rubbery.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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