Skip to main content
Main

To Clean Tripe

A method for cleaning and tenderizing tripe using lye, salt, lime, and buttermilk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Buttermilk and lime work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 62 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Clean Tripe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Empty the tripe.

  2. Rinse the tripe thoroughly in cold water.

Lye and scrape

  1. Make a strong lye solution.

  2. Heat the lye solution.

  3. Pour the lye solution over the tripe in a tub.

  4. Let the tripe stand in the lye solution for 2-3 hours.

  5. Turn the tripe inside out.

  6. Tack the tripe to a board.

  7. Scrape off the inner skin with a knife.

  8. Sprinkle lime over the tripe.

  9. Scrape the tripe again.

  10. Rinse the tripe in cold water.

Soak

  1. Soak the tripe in water with a large handful of salt for 3 days, changing the water daily.

  2. Cut the tripe into pieces about 6 inches wide and 12 inches long.

  3. Soak the pieces in buttermilk for a few days.

  4. Rinse the tripe in cold water.

Cook

  1. Boil the tripe until tender (4-10 hours).

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. Buttermilk + limetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together62 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tripe
The main ingredient, cleaned and then cooked until tender.
Buttermilk
Its mild acidity helps soften and freshen the tripe during soaking.

The step that matters

Standing in the lye solution. Lye is strongly alkaline and loosens the tripe's inner skin, so a strong solution must be handled with care and left for the set time, not longer, to avoid damaging the tripe.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes