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Preserve

To Clean Tripe

A method for cleaning and tenderizing tripe using lye, lime, salt, and buttermilk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lime and buttermilk work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 62 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Clean Tripe

Ingredients

Directions

Clean the tripe

  1. Rinse the tripe in cold water after emptying it.

  2. Make a strong lye.

  3. Pour the lye hot over the tripe.

  4. Let the tripe soak for 3 hours.

  5. Fasten the tripe to a board with tacks.

  6. Scrape the inner skin off with a knife.

  7. Sprinkle the tripe with lime.

  8. Cover the tripe with warm water.

  9. Soak for 2 hours.

  10. Scrape the tripe again.

  11. If the dark comes off, the tripe is clean; if not, repeat the lime sprinkle and soak.

  12. Cover the tripe with salt water.

  13. Soak for 3 days.

  14. Add clear brine each day.

Prepare and cook

  1. Cut the tripe into 6-inch squares.

  2. Soak the squares in buttermilk for 1 day.

  3. Rinse the squares.

  4. Boil the squares in clear water until very tender.

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. Lime + buttermilktop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together62 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tripe
Is the main food being cleaned and softened until it becomes tender enough to eat.
Lime
Helps loosen the dark inner skin so it can be scraped away.
Buttermilk
Its mild acidity softens the tripe further and adds a tangy flavor.

The step that matters

Repeat the lime and soak until the dark skin is gone. If dark skin is left on, the tripe will taste off and stay tough. The record says to check after scraping and repeat the lime and soak if needed, so the cook should not skip the check.

“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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