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Tripe with Onion Sauce

Tripe with onion sauce is a dish of boiled tripe served with a sauce made from onions, butter, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 with Onion Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tripe

  1. Wash the tripe thoroughly, remove all fat, and cut it into strips about 1 inch wide and 3-4 inches long.

  2. Cook the tripe in boiling water for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the onions and soak them in water with a little salt for 15 minutes to keep them white.

  2. Place the onions in a saucepan, cover with water, and cook until tender, changing the water if they are very strong.

  3. Drain the onions, chop them finely, and pass them through a sieve or potato ricer.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, rub together the butter and flour, then gradually stir in the milk over low heat.

  2. Stir continuously until the mixture thickens and boils, then add the cooked tripe and mix well.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Tripe
Forms the main body of the dish, giving it a chewy, substantial texture after long cooking.
Onions
Cooked, strained onions give the sauce its sweetness and smooth body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and smoothing the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the milk into a sauce when cooked with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, which thickens as it heats with the flour.

The step that matters

Stirring the sauce as it thickens. Flour mixed into hot milk can form lumps if not stirred constantly. Continuous stirring while it heats lets the starch swell evenly, giving a smooth sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

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