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Boiled Tripe, Onion Sauce

A dish of boiled tripe served with a sauce made from onions, milk, flour, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Boiled Tripe, Onion Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tripe

  1. Weigh and wash the tripe.

  2. Place the tripe in boiling water with skim milk for 5 minutes to whiten it.

  3. Reduce heat and simmer the tripe for about 1 hour and 15 minutes until well done.

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the onions.

  2. Place the onions in a pan with boiling water and a little salt.

  3. Cook the onions slowly for 1 hour until tender.

  4. Chop the boiled onions finely.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a pot, combine the chopped onions with 1 pint of boiling milk thickened with flour, and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Simmer the onion sauce for 5 minutes before serving.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + oniontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Is the main protein, becoming tender through long simmering until well done.
Onions
Provide sweetness and body as they soften into the sauce.
Boiling milk
Forms the creamy base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk so the sauce coats the onions.

The step that matters

Simmering the tripe until well done. Tripe is tough connective tissue that only becomes tender after prolonged, gentle simmering. Cutting the time short leaves it chewy, while a hard boil can toughen it further.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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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