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TRIPE (a la Lyonnaise)
When there is any tripe remaining from the previous day, it may be sent to table again prepared as follows. Take a pound of cold boiled tripe, dry it well, and cut it into pieces an inch square. Dissolve two ounces of butter in an omelet-pan, slice a large onion into this, and fry it over a gentle fire until it is tender. Put the pieces of tripe with it, and also a table-spoonful of chopped parsley, a table-spoonful of vinegar, and a little pepper and salt. Heat all gently together for a minute, and serve immediately. Time, five or six minutes to fry the tripe and onions. Probable cost, tripe, 8d. per pound. Sufficient for two or three persons.
A leftovers dish: it assumes a pound of tripe already boiled tender the day before, and only tells you how to finish it. Everything depends on that assumption holding.
- Start with genuinely cooked tripeTripe sold today is usually "dressed" — cleaned and blanched — but not cooked through. It needs a slow simmer of two to three hours in salted water with an onion, a bay leaf and a few peppercorns before it is tender enough for this recipe. Six minutes in butter will not soften it.
- Which tripeHoneycomb (the second stomach) holds the butter and dressing well and is often preferred for this kind of treatment. Blanket or plain tripe works but is blander and more slippery.
- Omelet-panA shallow, wide frying pan with sloping sides. Any 10-inch skillet does the job; the point is a broad surface so the tripe sits in one layer and colours rather than steams.
- Dry it wellThis is the hinge. Boiled tripe holds a great deal of water and will refuse to brown if it goes into the pan damp. Pat it thoroughly with a cloth or paper and let it sit out for a few minutes first.
- The onion timing is optimisticA large sliced onion generally takes 10 to 15 minutes over a gentle heat to go properly tender and sweet, so the stated five or six minutes for frying the tripe and onions looks short. In practice, cook the onion first, then add the tripe.
- Two ounces of butterAbout 55 g, or four tablespoons — generous for a pound of tripe, but it carries the dish. Adding a spoonful of neutral oil keeps the butter from browning too hard during the longer onion cooking.
- The vinegarA tablespoon of ordinary malt or wine vinegar. The recipe adds it along with the parsley and heats all together for a minute; adding it late keeps the sharpness bright against the fat.
- Cost and yield8d. per pound is pre-decimal British currency and tells you only that tripe was cheap offal. The stated two or three servings is right for a pound as a light main course with bread or boiled potatoes.
À la Lyonnaise means, almost without exception, cooked with onions in butter — Lyon's reputation for onion cookery is old enough that the phrase functioned as shorthand across nineteenth-century menus, attached to potatoes, eggs, liver and tripe alike. Tripe itself was a staple of cheap English eating well into the twentieth century, sold ready-boiled by specialist tripe dressers in the industrial north and by butchers elsewhere, which is why Cassell's can open by assuming a household has some left over. The entry sits in a long tradition of reheat-and-redeem instructions aimed at the cook who must not waste a pennyworth of meat; dressing yesterday's tripe with fried onion, parsley and a sharp splash of vinegar turned a plain boiled remnant into something that could be sent to table without apology.