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Tripe an Blanc

Tripe cooked in a white sauce of cream or milk thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tripe an Blanc

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tripe

  1. Combine tripe, water, salt, pepper, and minced onions in a stewpan.

  2. Simmer gently for 2 hours or until tender.

  3. Strain the gravy and remove any fat.

Make the sauce and finish

  1. Boil the gravy and thicken it by adding flour mixed in cream or milk.

  2. Return the tripe to the sauce and simmer gently for 15 minutes.

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

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

  2. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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 substance of the dish, becoming tender through long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Thickens the gravy into a smooth white sauce as it heats.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and body to the sauce and mellows its flavour.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Boil the gravy before thickening. Flour only thickens properly when the liquid is hot enough for its starch to swell. Adding the flour mixture to a gravy that is not boiling can leave lumps or a thin sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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