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Beef Tripe, to Fricassee
Stew gently in milk and water two pounds of tripe, cut into strips of equal lengths, with a bunch of parsley and an onion. When it has simmered one hour add the peel of half a lemon, an ounce of butter rubbed in flour, and a quarter of a pint of cream. Season with grated nutmeg, salt, and pepper, and when it has simmered another hour serve with the sauce over, and an edging of rice round the dish. Probable cost, 1s. 8d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A plain white fricassee of the sort that once appeared on supper tables weekly. The method is sound; only the units, the state of the tripe and the thickening need translating.
- Start with dressed tripeVictorian butchers sold tripe already scalded and part-cooked; anything labelled "dressed" or "bleached" today is the same thing and is what the two-hour simmer assumes. Green (undressed) tripe is not food-ready and needs far longer cleaning and cooking than this recipe allows.
- The cutHoneycomb tripe is a common modern choice for a fricassee, though the recipe simply says "strips of equal lengths". Strips of roughly 3 inches by 1/2 inch cook evenly and stay manageable on the fork.
- Milk and waterNo quantity is given. Use enough to cover the tripe by about an inch, roughly half milk and half water; the milk keeps the colour pale, which is the whole point of a fricassee.
- A quarter of a pint of creamAn imperial quarter-pint is 5 fl oz, about 142 ml (a scant two-thirds of a US cup). Single or light cream is closer to the period's product than heavy cream.
- Butter rubbed in flourThis is beurre manié: an ounce (2 tablespoons) of butter kneaded with roughly its own weight in flour -- the recipe gives no flour quantity -- dropped in in pieces and stirred until it dissolves. It thickens without the raw-flour taste of a dry sprinkle.
- Keep it below a boilOnce the cream and the butter-and-flour are in, hold the pan at a bare tremble. A rolling boil will split the milk and cream and the sauce goes grainy.
- Lemon peelPare it thinly with no white pith, add it whole, and fish it out before serving. Two hours of simmering will make pith bitter.
- ServingPlain boiled long-grain rice piped or spooned round the edge of a hot dish, tripe and sauce in the middle. As written it serves four to five; the probable cost of 1s 8d is Victorian money and covers the cream, butter and lemon as well as the tripe.
History: Tripe -- the stomach lining of cattle -- was a staple of British working and lower-middle-class cookery well into the twentieth century, sold by specialist tripe dressers who scalded and bleached it before it reached the buyer, so the domestic cook's work was only the stewing. A fricassee is a French term for meat cooked gently in a pale sauce enriched at the end with butter, cream or egg yolks, and its appearance here with lemon peel, nutmeg and a rice border shows a genuinely cheap offal dish being dressed in the manner of a much grander entre. Tripe's decline in Britain is usually traced to the post-war years, as offal fell out of fashion and the dressers' shops closed; it survives more robustly in Lyonnaise, Norman, Italian and Mexican kitchens, where it is still cooked long and slowly by much the same logic.