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Tripe and Oysters

A stew of tender tripe and oysters simmered in milk, water, mace, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Tripe and Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tripe

  1. Boil the tripe in milk and water for 4 to 5 hours until tender.

  2. Cut the tripe into small pieces.

Stew

  1. Place the tripe in a stew pan and cover with milk.

  2. Add mace and let it stew for 5 minutes.

  3. Add the oysters, butter, flour, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Let it stew for another 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve in a bowl, skimming off any fat on the surface.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

Tripe
Provides the main body and chewy texture of the stew after long boiling.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that cooks the tripe and gives the stew its richness.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour and tender texture as they stew briefly.
Flour
Thickens the stew's liquid, giving it body when combined with butter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel in the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the oysters and the final short stew. Oysters are delicate and overcook quickly, becoming tough and shrunken if simmered too long. Keep the stew at a gentle heat for only the stated time once they go in.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, oyster, butter, flour, 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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