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Tripe in Batter
Cut in pieces for serving, roll in seasoned Gold Medal flour, dip in batter, and saute in hot butter. Drain on brown paper.
Nine words of instruction resting on a whole afternoon of unstated work: this is a recipe for what to do with tripe that has already been cooked tender. Everything that matters happens before the flour.
- The tripe must be cooked firstHoneycomb tripe as sold today is scalded and bleached but still raw and rubbery. Simmer it in salted water, with an onion and a bay leaf, for 2 to 3 hours until a knife goes through easily, then cool and dry it thoroughly. Sauteing alone will never tenderize it.
- The missing batterNo batter is given here; you have to supply one. A workable one is 1 cup flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 egg and about 3/4 cup milk, beaten smooth and thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.
- Flour first, then batterThe dry dredge is not decoration. Damp tripe sheds batter in the pan; a thin coat of seasoned flour gives the batter something to grip.
- Seasoned flourIn cookbooks of this kind seasoned flour generally meant salt and pepper. About half a teaspoon of salt and a quarter of pepper per cup of flour is a workable proportion; mustard powder or cayenne is a reasonable modern addition.
- Butter and heatButter alone browns and burns before the batter sets. Use half butter and half a neutral oil, or clarified butter, at a steady medium-high heat. Two to three minutes a side is enough to set and color the coating.
- Brown paperPlain brown paper, such as a grocery bag, was what the instruction meant. Paper towels or a wire rack over a sheet pan do the job without the ink and glue of modern packaging.
- YieldA pound of prepared tripe cut into serving pieces feeds two or three as a main dish. Serve hot with lemon, vinegar, or a mustard sauce -- the acid is not optional with tripe.
Tripe -- the muscular lining of a ruminant's stomach, usually the honeycomb second chamber -- was cheap, filling protein in the American household kitchen of the early twentieth century, and cookbooks of the period treat it as unremarkably as they treat liver or kidney. Fried tripe in batter was standard boardinghouse and market-town fare on both sides of the Atlantic, close kin to English tripe-and-onions and to Philadelphia's pepper pot. Its appearance in a flour company's promotional cookbook is entirely to the point: the whole purpose of such a book was to attach the brand name to as many everyday operations as possible, and dredging and battering are two of them, which is why the flour is specified and the batter is not. The near-disappearance of tripe from American home cooking tracks the mid-century decline of offal generally, as refrigeration, packaged cuts, and rising incomes made the cheap parts of the animal less necessary and, eventually, less familiar.