Clean and boil tripe until tender; then fry 1 chopped carrot and 1 onion until light brown. Stir in 1 tablespoonful of flour; add 1 cup of stock, 1 bay-leaf, some thyme and parsley; let boil. Season with salt, pepper and lemon-juice. Cut the tripe into narrow strips; add to the sauce. Let simmer one-half hour and serve.
The recipe assumes you know what tripe is and how long it takes, which is where nearly all the difficulty sits. Everything after the boiling is a straightforward brown sauce.
- Quantity, since none is givenAbout 1 1/2 to 2 lb of tripe suits the single cup of stock and one tablespoon of flour here. That serves four as a main course.
- The hinge: boil the tripe properly first"Until tender" means 1 1/2 to 3 hours at a bare simmer, depending on the cut, and it is done when a knife slips in with no resistance. The half-hour in the sauce at the end will not tenderise anything; it only marries the flavours.
- "Clean" in 1900 meant more than it does now"Clean" meant more then than it does now -- Tripe was often sold green or only partly dressed, so the instruction covered scraping and repeated rinsing, and lime or salt soaks were used in dressing it. Tripe sold today has usually already been cleaned and scalded; rinse it well and go straight to the pot.
- Which tripeHoneycomb (the second stomach) holds sauce best and is the usual choice; blanket or plain tripe is flatter and blander. Either works, but cooking times differ, so test rather than clock-watch.
- Cook the boiling water like a brothThe recipe boils the tripe in plain water and makes no use of the liquid. A halved onion, a bay leaf and salt in that first pot cost nothing and improve the result; you can also use a ladle of the cooking liquor in place of some of the stock.
- The rouxOne tablespoon of flour to one cup of stock gives a thin, light-coating sauce, not a gravy. Let the flour cook with the browned carrot and onion for a minute or two before the liquid goes in, or the sauce tastes raw and pasty.
- Lemon juice lastSeason with it off the heat and taste as you go. Tripe is mild and slightly rich, and the acid is what keeps the dish from going flat; start with a teaspoon or two.
- ServingBoiled or mashed potatoes suit it, and plenty of chopped parsley at the table. The dish reheats well, and arguably improves overnight.
Tripe was a cheap, filling offal eaten across Britain, often served as tripe and onions in a milky version rather than this browned one. What marks the recipe here as a stewed dish rather than the plain boiled sort is the flour-thickened brown sauce with carrot, bay, thyme and parsley technique applied to the humblest cut, which is exactly what a book of "dishes of all nations" was selling to American home cooks in the early twentieth century. Its near-disappearance from English-speaking kitchens has less to do with taste than with the collapse of the offal trade and the hours of simmering the recipe quietly assumes you have.