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Tripe ‘a LA Poulette’

A French tripe dish simmered with onion, butter, flour, broth, parsley, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tripe ‘a LA Poulette’

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tripe

  1. Cut the boiled tripe into long squares.

  2. Chop the onion and fry it in butter in a stewpan until it turns a fine yellow color.

  3. Add the cut tripe to the onion and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Fry until the moisture reduces, then sprinkle with flour.

Make the sauce

  1. Gradually moisten with warm broth and stir until it boils.

  2. Add the garnished parsley and simmer on low heat for 25 minutes.

  3. Remove the tripe with a fork and place it in another stewpan.

  4. Reduce the sauce, stirring, then thicken it with a mixture of the egg yolks.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the sauce over the tripe and finish with a piece of butter, a pinch of parsley, and pepper.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Boiled tripe
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it simmers in the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and adds flavor when used to fry the onion.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth sauce that coats the tripe.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the sauce, giving it a velvety texture.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it fries to a fine yellow.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, as their proteins set. If the sauce boils after adding them, the yolks can scramble and turn grainy, so the sauce should be reduced and thickened without returning to a hard boil.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, parsley, egg, pepper. 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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