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To Boil Tripe

A boiled tripe dish simmered with onions, butter, flour, and cream, seasoned with pepper, salt, 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 in warm water and trim off all the fat.

  2. Cut the tripe into small pieces.

  3. Place the tripe in a pot with enough water to cover it completely.

  4. Boil the tripe for four hours.

  5. Pour off the water.

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

  7. Add equal parts milk and water to the tripe.

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

Make the onion 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 to the saucepan.

  5. Add a bit of butter rolled in flour to the saucepan.

  6. Add a ⅓ cup of cream or milk to the saucepan.

  7. 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
Main protein; long boiling makes it tender enough to eat.
Onions
Provide the sweet, soft body and flavor of the sauce once boiled and mashed.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and with flour helps thicken the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter, giving it body.
Heavy cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, creating a smooth, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the tripe for four hours. Tripe is tough and must be simmered long enough to become tender; cutting the boil short leaves it chewy.

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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