To Boil Tripe

A characteristically terse Victorian entry: no quantities, no timings, and an assumption that the cook already knows tripe. The essentials are a gentle milk-and-water simmer and onions that have been tamed by pre-boiling.

• What tripe you can buy nowNearly all tripe sold today is "dressed" — scalded, bleached and partly cooked by the tripe dresser. Honeycomb (the second stomach) is the best texture for this treatment; blanket or plain tripe is flatter and blander. If you find genuinely green, undressed tripe, it needs hours of scrubbing and repeated boiling before this recipe begins.
• Milk and water, equal partsUse enough to cover by an inch or so, in equal parts milk and water; the volume depends on your pan and the quantity of tripe. Keep it at a bare tremble; milk scorches and catches on the bottom the moment it comes to a real boil.
• Timing the original omitsDressed tripe wants 45 minutes to an hour and a half at a simmer, until a knife point slides in with no resistance. Undercooked tripe is rubbery; overcooked tripe turns to slush, so start testing at 40 minutes.
• Onions boiled in several watersThe instruction is deliberate: bringing peeled onions to the boil, draining, and repeating two or three times strips out the sulphurous bite and leaves them sweet and pale. Skipping it gives you sharp onion in a milk broth. Two or three medium onions is the sense of it.
• "Melted butter" is a sauce, not butterIn British books of this kind, melted butter means the standard flour-and-butter white sauce, loosened here with the cooking liquor; proportions vary from source to source. Plain liquid butter will simply separate over the tripe.
• Serve the whole togetherThe tripe, onions and their milky liquor go to the table as one dish; the liquor is thin and is meant to be soaked up. Cut the tripe into ribbons or squares before serving and season it at the end.
• YieldAllow 6 to 8 oz of dressed tripe a head; a pound with the onions and sauce serves two.