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Tripe Fricassée
I 1/2 lbs. fine tripe A little grated nutmeg I small onion 1 tablespoonful cornstarch 1/2 pint (I cup) milk Salt and pepper to taste 1 egg yolk Prepare the raw tripe by thoroughly scraping and scalding after it has been procured cleansed; then cut it in small pieces, and cover it with cold water; let it boil for a quarter of an hour, throw away the water, and wash the tripe once more. Then put it in a casserole covered with cold water; let it boil, then allow it to simmer for four and a half hours; add the onion, and allow it to cook for a quarter of an hour longer.
Take out the onion then and chop it up finely.
Drain all the water from the tripe, and replace it with the milk; add the chopped onion, and let it simmer for ten minutes. Now stir in the cornstarch moistened with a little cold milk, add the seasonings, and stir till it boils; allow to cook for five minutes, stirring all the time. Remove it from the fire, and add the yolk of egg; mix thoroughly, and serve hot.
A white stew of the plainest kind, built for a convalescent's tray rather than a dinner table. Two things need adjusting for a modern cook: the vessel and the cooking time.
- The casseroleHere the pot is boiled and simmered on the stovetop, so what is meant is a lidded flameproof earthenware or enamelled pot rather than a baking dish. A heavy Dutch oven or any thick-bottomed saucepan with a lid does the same work.
- Tripe you can actually buyThe instruction to scrape and scald assumes tripe bought only partly dressed. Honeycomb tripe sold today is already cleaned, bleached and usually par-boiled, so skip the scraping entirely; a rinse is enough.
- Four and a half hours is too longFour and a half hours is a long simmer -- That figure suits raw, undressed tripe. Modern dressed tripe is usually tender in about 1 1/2 to 2 hours of gentle simmering. Test with a knife point rather than the clock.
- The first boilThe fifteen-minute blanch in water that is then thrown away is not wasted effort; it takes the edge off the strong smell of tripe. Keep it even if you shorten the main simmer.
- Half a pintThe recipe glosses it correctly as one cup, which is the American half-pint. An imperial half-pint would be closer to 1 1/4 cups; use the cup.
- The egg yolkOff the heat is the whole point. Beat the yolk with a spoonful of the hot sauce first, then stir it back in; returning the pan to the flame afterwards will curdle it into threads.
- SeasoningMilk, cornstarch and boiled tripe give you nothing but texture, so the nutmeg, salt and pepper are doing all the flavour work. Season at the end, after the sauce has thickened and tasted.
- YieldRoughly three modest servings, or four as invalid portions. It is best eaten freshly made; a cornstarch-thickened milk sauce tends to loosen on standing and reheating.
Tripe had a long history as convalescent food: it was thought light, easily digested and strengthening, and it was cheap. Fricassée in this period generally means meat cut small, cooked gently and finished in a pale sauce, and the milk, cornstarch and egg yolk here produce the bland, white, spoonable sort of dish that nineteenth-century medical opinion favoured for the unwell. The sharper flavours now associated with tripe — the onions and vinegar of Lyonnaise treatments, the cider and spices of tripes à la mode de Caen — are absent here. The grating of nutmeg is the one concession to seasoning, and nutmeg was long reputed to settle the stomach.