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To Boil Tripe

A boiled tripe dish served with a creamy onion sauce, seasoned with pepper, 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 well 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 it for five hours.

  5. After four hours, pour off the water.

  6. Season the tripe with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Simmer the tripe

  1. Place the tripe in a pot with equal parts milk and water.

  2. Boil the tripe in the milk and water for one hour.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate saucepan, boil ten or a dozen onions until soft.

  2. Drain and mash the onions.

  3. Wipe out the saucepan.

  4. Add the mashed onions with a bit of butter rolled in flour and a ⅓ cup of cream or milk. Let the mixture boil.

Serve

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

  2. 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. 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
The main ingredient; long simmering softens its naturally tough, chewy texture.
Milk
Gives the simmering liquid and the sauce a creamy, mellow body.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and smoothness to the sauce.
Onions
Softened and mashed, they add sweetness and body to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and cooks with flour to form a thickening base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and boiled.

The step that matters

Boiling the butter and flour into the sauce. Flour only thickens fully when it is heated in the liquid until the sauce boils. If it is not boiled, the sauce stays thin and can taste pasty or raw.

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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