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Chitterlings O-r Calf's Tripe

A stew of boiled chitterlings with mashed onions, butter, cream, nutmeg, and flour, served over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chitterlings O-r Calf's Tripe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chitterlings

  1. Wash the chitterlings and cut them into pieces.

  2. Place the pieces in a stew-pan with pepper, salt, and 2 quarts of water.

  3. Boil for 2 hours or more.

Make the onions

  1. Peel the onions and boil them whole in plenty of water until soft.

  2. Drain and mash them.

  3. In a cleaned sauce-pan, combine the mashed onions, a piece of butter, cream or milk, nutmeg, and a little salt.

  4. Sprinkle in some flour and cover.

  5. Heat on hot coals until it boils.

Serve

  1. Once the chitterlings are tender, drain them.

  2. Place buttered toast in a dish and lay the chitterlings on top.

  3. Serve with the stewed onions.

  4. Season with pepper and vinegar before eating.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

Chitterlings
Main protein that becomes tender through long simmering.
White onions
Soften and mash into a thick, sweet base for the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the mashed onion mixture.
Cream or rich milk
Adds moisture and smoothness to the mashed onions.
Flour
Thickens the onion mixture as it heats.

The step that matters

Boiling the chitterlings until tender. Chitterlings are tough and need a long, gentle simmer for the connective tissue to break down. Stopping early leaves them chewy, so check tenderness before draining.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, cream, nutmeg, flour, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, cream, nutmeg, flour, vinegar. 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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