Home › The Principles of Cookery › Tripe, Roasted
Tripe, Roasted
Take about a pound and a half of tripe, wash, and boil it in milk and water for an hour. Cut it into two oblong pieces of equal size, spread on the fat side of one piece some good veal forcemeat, and lay upon it the other piece the fat side inwards. Roll and skewer the tripe securely, and tie it round with thin string. Fasten it on the spit, put it down before a clear fire, dredge with flour, and baste liberally. When done enough, serve on a hot dish, and garnish with sliced lemon. Send melted butter to table in a tureen. Time to roast, half an hour or more. Probable cost, tripe, 8d. per pound. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A Victorian spit dish that translates easily to a hot oven, provided the tripe is genuinely tender before it is rolled. The boiling stage, not the roasting, decides whether this succeeds.
- Boil until tender, not by the clockAn hour in milk and water assumes tripe already well dressed and part-cooked by the tripe dresser, as was usual when this book was written. Much tripe sold today needs considerably longer at a bare simmer -- often 1.5 to 3 hours -- tested by whether a knife slips through without resistance, before it will be pleasant to eat.
- Milk and waterThe recipe gives no proportions; roughly equal parts, enough to cover, is a reasonable reading. Milk whitens the tripe and softens its flavour and smell. Nothing further is done with the cooking liquid.
- Which tripeHoneycomb (second stomach) is a common choice and holds forcemeat well between its ridges. Plain or blanket tripe will also do, though it is flatter and gives a less shapely roll. The recipe's reference to a "fat side" is the only guidance it offers.
- Veal forcemeatVictorian veal forcemeat is generally minced veal and/or suet bound with breadcrumbs and egg, flavoured with lemon peel, parsley and mace; consult the book's own forcemeat entry rather than assuming. A fine sausagemeat with lemon zest and herbs stirred through is a fair substitute. Do not overfill, or the roll will be hard to close.
- Spit to ovenBefore a clear fire means strong radiant heat from one side, the turning spit bringing each surface to the fire in turn. In a modern oven a hot setting of around 400-425F on a rack over a tray, turned once or twice, is a reasonable equivalent; allow longer than the stated half hour -- 40 to 50 minutes -- so that the raw forcemeat in the centre reaches at least 160F.
- Dredge and basteFlouring the wet surface and then basting with dripping or butter is what gives the browned crust. Baste often; apart from the fat side the recipe mentions, tripe carries little fat and will dry out otherwise.
- Melted butterNot simply warm butter. In Victorian usage this is a thin white butter sauce, butter worked with a little flour and thinned with water or milk. The recipe sends it to table hot in a tureen.
- Skewers and stringWooden skewers scorch in a hot oven; metal ones or a firm lacing of butcher's twine at 1-inch intervals is more reliable. Remove the string before slicing across the roll.
- YieldA pound and a half of tripe plus forcemeat serves three or four as the original says, cut into thick rounds, with the lemon and butter sauce.
Tripe was a cheap animal food in nineteenth-century Britain -- eightpence a pound here, close to the price of cheaper butcher's cuts in the period -- and it reached the cook already scraped, soaked and part-boiled by a specialist tripe dresser, which is why so many old recipes give it only a token further boiling. Northern English towns had dedicated tripe shops well into the twentieth century, and dressing tripe was a trade in its own right. What is interesting about this particular recipe is the ambition: stuffing the tripe with veal forcemeat, spitting it, flouring and basting it, and sending it up with lemon and butter sauce is exactly the treatment a fashionable kitchen gave a small roast joint. Cassell's frequently applies the grammar of expensive cookery to cheap materials.