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Tripe, Stewed, with Bacon
Take two pounds of fresh white tripe, half a pound of bacon, and a calf's foot. Cut the tripe into pieces three inches square, and scald these in boiling water for five minutes. Bone the foot, scald it for ten minutes, and cut it into six or eight pieces. Divide the bacon also into pieces convenient for serving. Put the meat into a stewpan with a large bunch of parsley, a sprig of thyme, two bay-leaves, three large onions, two cloves, and a little pepper and salt, and pour in as much broth as will cover the whole. A glassful of brandy may be added or not, as preferred. Cover the saucepan closely, let its contents boil, then draw it to the side, and let them simmer very gently until the meat is done enough. Take out the herbs, skim the sauce carefully, and serve the stewed meat in a tureen, with the sauce poured over it. Send it to table as hot as possible. Time to stew, three hours. Probable cost, 3s. 6d., exclusive of the brandy. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A long, gentle braise of the old French type, thickened by nothing but the gelatine from a calf's foot. Almost everything that can go wrong here comes from letting it boil rather than simmer.
- Keep it below a simmerOnce it has come to the boil the pan is drawn to the side deliberately: tripe held at a rolling boil tightens and turns rubbery, and the bacon shreds. Hold the liquid at 180-190F, with barely a movement on the surface, for the full three hours.
- "Fresh white tripe"In this period tripe was sold dressed and part-cooked by the tripe dresser, so the five-minute scald was only a refresher. Modern honeycomb tripe is usually sold bleached and blanched but still raw-firm; it will need the full three hours and may want closer to four before it is tender.
- The calf's footIt is there for gelatine, not for meat, and gives the sauce its body and lip-sticking quality. A butcher will split one to order; a veal knuckle or two pig's trotters do the same job. Without it the sauce stays thin, since the recipe uses no flour.
- The baconThe recipe specifies only 'bacon', cut into pieces convenient for serving rather than rashers, so a thick slab cut is wanted. Victorian bacon might be smoked or green (unsmoked); an unsmoked slab or a piece of unsmoked pancetta will keep the pot mildest, while heavily smoked supermarket bacon will dominate it. Salt lightly at the start and correct at the end.
- Broth'As much as will cover' is roughly 2 to 2 1/2 pints for this quantity in a close-fitting pan, though it depends entirely on the pan. Light veal or chicken stock, or even water, since the foot and bacon supply plenty of flavour.
- Herbs and aromaticsThe recipe says to take the herbs out at the end, so tying the parsley, thyme and bay into a bundle is the practical way to manage it, though the text does not say to. 'Two cloves' here means two whole spice cloves; the recipe does not say how the three onions are to be cut.
- SkimmingThree hours of pork and calf's foot throws a good deal of fat. Skim through cooking, then let the sauce settle off the heat for ten minutes and skim again; chilling the strained sauce and lifting the set fat gives the cleanest result.
- Cost and yieldThe recipe gives 3s. 6d., exclusive of the brandy, and reckons it sufficient for five or six persons. Serve as written, very hot.
Tripe with bacon and a calf's foot, stewed for hours with onion, bay and a glass of brandy, is often compared to the Norman tripe dishes of which tripes a la mode de Caen is the best known. The logic is thrift: tripe and calf's feet were among the cheapest things on the butcher's slab, and the foot contributes the gelatine that lets a cook produce a glossy, clinging sauce without flour, cream or stock reduction. In late nineteenth-century Britain tripe was an everyday urban food, sold ready-dressed by specialist tripe dressers in the industrial North in particular, which is why the recipe assumes the reader can simply buy it "fresh white" and scald it briefly. The instruction to send it to table as hot as possible is not a flourish; a gelatinous sauce of this kind sets and dulls quickly as it cools, and the dish was served in a tureen.