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Tripe, French Way of Dressing
Take one pound and a half of fresh white tripe. Cut it into convenient-sized pieces, put it into a stewpan with as much strong veal broth as will cover it, and let it simmer gently for four hours. Put two table-spoonfuls of chopped mushrooms into a stewpan with a table-spoonful of chopped parsley, one shallot finely minced, half a bay-leaf, and a little pepper and salt. Pour over these a quarter of a pint of good white sauce, and stir the mixture over a gentle fire until the vegetables are tender. Add as much veal broth as will make the sauce of the consistency of melted butter, and boil it gently until it is very smooth. Serve the tripe in a deep dish with the sauce poured over it. Time to stew the tripe, four hours. Probable cost, 8d. per pound. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A plain braise of tripe finished with a herbed white sauce. The only technical demand is patience with the tripe and restraint with the sauce, which should pour rather than coat.
- What "white tripe" meansVictorian butchers sold tripe already cleaned, scalded and part-boiled, sometimes bleached with lime. Nearly all tripe sold today is the same dressed honeycomb or blanket tripe, so start from that; unprocessed "green" tripe is a specialist purchase and needs long scrubbing and repeated blanching before it goes near a stewpan.
- Four hours is for older tripeModern dressed tripe is far further along than the Victorian article. Judge by feel rather than the clock: 1.5 to 2.5 hours of bare simmering usually brings it to the point where it is yielding and gelatinous but still has some bite. Four hours will not ruin it, but it may collapse toward mush.
- Veal brothA light unsalted veal stock is the intended liquid and gives the sauce its body. A mild chicken stock is the nearest substitute; avoid dark beef stock, which fights the pale sauce the recipe is aiming at.
- A quarter of a pintIn this book that is an imperial quarter-pint, 5 imperial fl oz, which is a little under 5 US fl oz, or a generous half US cup. The "good white sauce" of the period is a plain flour-and-butter white sauce made with milk or broth, not a modern cream reduction.
- "Consistency of melted butter"A period benchmark for a thin, freely pouring sauce that just coats a spoon and runs off it. Thin the mushroom mixture with broth until it behaves that way, then simmer it smooth; a thick sauce turns the dish stodgy.
- AromaticsOne shallot and half a bay leaf is deliberately restrained, letting the mushrooms and parsley carry the flavour. Chop the mushrooms fine so they melt into the sauce rather than sitting in it, and pull the bay leaf before serving.
- ServingServes four to five as the book says; as a main course with boiled potatoes it will serve three. Serve very hot in a warmed deep dish, since tripe stiffens quickly as it cools.
- On the cost noteEightpence a pound put tripe among the cheaper animal foods of the day, though not the very cheapest. It is no longer a bargain by weight in many places, but it remains inexpensive relative to muscle cuts.
The recipe is given as the French treatment; the British habit was to stew tripe in milk with onions, a dish long associated with Lancashire and the industrial north -- though the page itself draws no such contrast. The French tradition it gestures at is the one behind tripes à la mode de Caen from Normandy, where tripe is cooked for hours with aromatics; here the long, gentle broth simmer is kept but the finish is a delicate white sauce with mushroom, parsley and shallot, close in spirit to a sauce poulette though without that sauce's egg-yolk-and-lemon liaison. That such a recipe sits in a general household dictionary says a good deal about Victorian eating: tripe was an ordinary, cheap, widely sold food, and a book of this sort was expected to show a cook how to lift it above the plain boiled version without spending more money.