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Tripe, Fried
The remains of cold boiled tripe are required for this dish. If fresh tripe is used, it should be first boiled till tender in water mixed with a fourth part of vinegar, and then allowed to cool. Make a little frying-batter as follows. Mix three-quarters of a pound of flour with a tea-spoonful of salt, and beat it till smooth with two ounces of olive-oil or oiled butter, a little more than half a pint of lukewarm water, and three eggs. The water should be added gradually, and the batter should be well beaten, and afterwards set aside for an hour or two before being used. Dry the tripe, and cut it into neat squares. Dip the pieces separately into the batter, and fry them in plenty of hot fat till they are lightly browned. The batter should be thick enough to coat the meat. Serve the tripe on a hot dish, and sprinkle over it fried onions which have been sliced and divided into rings. Or, serve it on a napkin, garnish with fried parsley, and send tomato or piquant sauce to table in a tureen, or a sauce prepared as follows. Mince a dozen shallots finely, and put them into a stewpan with a piece of butter the size of a small walnut, the strained juice of a lemon, a tea-spoonful of scraped horse-radish, a tea-spoonful of fresh mustard, and a little salt and cayenne. Stir these ingredients over a brisk fire for three or four minutes, then pour over them nearly half a pint of new milk, and boil the sauce for five minutes. Beat the yolk of a fresh egg for a minute or two, and mix with it two table-spoonfuls of thick cream. Lift the sauce from the fire for a minute, and stir in the mixture, then put it on the fire once more, and stir again until it is on the point of boiling. Pour it into a tureen, and it will be ready for serving. Time, two hours to boil the tripe; fifteen to twenty minutes to fry it. Probable cost, tripe, 8d. per pound.
A Victorian way with leftover boiled tripe: batter, deep-fry, and serve with onion rings or a sharp shallot cream. Most of the work happens before the frying pan comes out.
- Buy the right tripeMost tripe sold today is already scalded and bleached, so it needs simmering rather than the long scrubbing and boiling of a butcher's raw honeycomb. Two hours in water with a quarter part vinegar, as the recipe directs, will still be about right for untreated tripe; pre-blanched tripe may be tender sooner. It is done when a knife passes through with no resistance.
- It must be cold and dryThis is the hinge. Warm or damp tripe sheds its batter in the fat and spits violently, because tripe holds a great deal of water. Chill it fully, then blot each square hard between towels before it goes near the bowl.
- Scale the batter downThree-quarters of a pound of flour is about 2 3/4 cups, and with three eggs and half a pint of water it makes enough coating for several pounds of meat. For a pound or so of tripe, quarter the recipe: roughly 3 oz flour, one egg, 2 1/2 fl oz water, a tablespoon of oil, a good pinch of salt.
- Oiled butterButter melted until it runs clear, the milk solids left behind. Olive oil, as the recipe allows, does the same job and is less trouble.
- The hour's rest mattersStanding lets the gluten relax and the flour hydrate, giving a batter that clings without turning tough. Do not skip it, and do not beat the batter again hard just before use.
- Frying temperature and timeFat at 350-375F. The stated fifteen to twenty minutes is presumably for the whole dish in batches; individual squares should brown in a few minutes, and longer only toughens tripe that is already cooked through. Fry in small batches so the fat does not drop below temperature.
- New milkSimply fresh whole milk, as opposed to skimmed or the previous day's. Whole milk is the modern equivalent.
- The shallot sauce will curdle if boiledOnce the egg yolk and cream go in, keep the pan just under a simmer and stir constantly. "On the point of boiling" is the limit; a true boil scrambles the yolk. A dozen shallots is a lot for half a pint of milk, so taste as you go and use fewer if yours are large.
- Serving"On a napkin" means a folded cloth on the platter to absorb frying fat; a rack or paper does the same. Fried parsley wants dry sprigs and only a few seconds in the hot fat.
Tripe was cheap protein in nineteenth-century Britain, and Cassell's costing of 8d. a pound puts it among the cheaper meats a household could buy, sold ready-boiled from tripe shops and dressers in the northern industrial towns in particular. Cassell's places this among dishes built on "the remains" of something already cooked, a preoccupation of Victorian household cookery, where the cold joint or the leftover boiled tripe was expected to reappear in a form respectable enough for the table. Frying in batter and sending a piquant sauce to table in a tureen is exactly that logic: French service and a shallot-and-mustard cream applied to offal. The vinegar in the boiling water is traditionally said to help tenderise and to cut the smell, and the accompanying onions are so fixed a partnership with tripe that the pairing survives in British usage long after the dish itself has retreated from most kitchens.