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Tripe and Onions

Tripe and onions simmered in milk with pepper, salt, and sugar, optionally thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper 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 and Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tripe

  1. Cut the tripe into pieces about 3 inches by 2 inches.

  2. Trim off the fat.

  3. Wash the tripe well in cold water.

  4. Dry the tripe on a clean cloth.

  5. Blanch the tripe in boiling water for 5 to 10 minutes.

Simmer

  1. Add 1 quart of milk and the tripe to a stewpan.

  2. Simmer gently for 2 to 3 hours. Stir frequently to prevent sticking.

Add the onions and season

  1. Boil the onions until done. Chop the onions.

  2. Add the chopped onions to the tripe.

  3. Season with pepper, salt, and sugar.

  4. If desired, stir in flour to thicken the milk 15 minutes before serving.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Main protein; slow simmering in milk makes it tender enough to eat.
Milk
Forms the cooking liquid and gives the dish its creamy, mild sauce.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften into the milk sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a looser sauce when stirred in before serving.

The step that matters

Simmering the tripe gently. A gentle simmer breaks down the tough connective tissue in tripe slowly. Boiling hard or skipping the stirring can scorch the milk and make it stick and curdle.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, pepper, sugar, 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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