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To Boil Tripe

Tripe Soup is a boiled tripe dish cooked 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 well in warm water and trim off the fat.

  2. Cut the tripe into small pieces and place it in a pot with enough water to cover it completely.

  3. Boil the tripe for 5 hours, pouring off the water after 4 hours.

Finish the soup

  1. Season the tripe with pepper and coarse sea salt, then add equal parts milk and water.

  2. Boil the tripe in the milk and water mixture for 1 hour.

  3. In a separate saucepan, boil 10 to 12 onions until soft, then drain and mash them.

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

  5. 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. 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
Provides the main body of the soup and its chewy texture after long boiling.
Onions
Soften and mash into a sweet, thickening base that gives the soup body.
Butter and flour
Form a roux-style mixture that helps thicken the onion addition.
Milk
Adds richness and mild sweetness to the broth.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and smoothness to the onion mixture.

The step that matters

Adding the onion mixture to the tripe. The mixture should boil before it is added so the flour thickens properly and it does not stay raw-tasting or lumpy. Adding it just before serving keeps the soup from thickening further or scorching.

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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