Name: To Clean Beef Tripe
Ingredients: beef tripe; lime; water; coarse sea salt; buttermilk

Why it works: Beef and lime work together. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 539 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

To Clean Beef Tripe

Ingredients

Directions

Rinse the tripe in cold water.
Place it in a tub and sprinkle lime over it.
Cover with tepid water and let it stand for four hours.
Scrape the tripe clean; if it doesn't clean easily, add more lime and let it sit for another hour.
Wash the tripe in several waters.
Soak in a saltwater solution for three days, changing the water on the second day.
For a whiter appearance, soak in buttermilk for four hours after rinsing off the salt.
Wash the tripe clean and cook as 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.

Beef + limetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together539 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Lime + buttermilktop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together62 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Beef + buttermilktop 32% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together76 recipes

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