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Broiled Tripe
Wash well a piece of tripe, place it in a saucepan with sufficient milk and water to cover it, and boil it for twenty or twenty-five minutes. Take it out, drain it, cut it up into pieces, brush them over with warm butter, sprinkle over salt and pepper to taste, place them on a gridiron over a clear fire, and broil until well browned. Place them on a napkin spread over a dish, and serve.
A two-stage method: a gentle simmer to tenderise, then a hard broil for colour. The only real difficulty is that tripe sold in 1900 arrived at the kitchen in a different state from what a butcher hands over today.
- The hinge: how far the tripe is already cookedTwenty-five minutes suggests tripe that reached the kitchen already scalded and largely tender by the tripe-dresser, needing little more than warming through. Tripe is often sold today cleaned and bleached but still raw, and that wants roughly 1.5 to 3 hours at a bare simmer until a knife slides in with no resistance. Broiling firm tripe only makes it firmer.
- Which tripeHoneycomb (the second stomach) is the usual choice and holds butter in its pockets, which suits this treatment. Plain or blanket tripe works but browns less interestingly.
- Milk and waterEqual parts is a proportion often given, though the recipe specifies none. The milk mutes the barnyard smell and lightens the colour; it will also scorch, so keep the heat low and the pan watched.
- Gridiron over a clear fireA "clear fire" is coals burned down past flame and smoke. A charcoal grill is the closest equivalent; under a domestic broiler set as high as it goes, put the tripe close to the element and expect 3 to 5 minutes a side.
- Warm butterMelted, not browned. Tripe is wet even after draining, so pat it dry first or the butter slides off and the surface steams instead of browning.
- Cut sizePieces of roughly 3 by 4 inches are manageable on a grill and give enough surface for a crust. Smaller strips fall through the bars.
- The napkinA folded linen napkin on the platter was common service for fried and grilled items: it absorbed fat and kept the pieces from sliding. Purely presentational, and easily skipped.
- Yield and accompanimentThe recipe names no quantity; reckon on about a pound of tripe for two as a main course. Mustard, a sharp vinegar sauce, or lemon is the usual foil for the richness; the recipe as printed gives none.
Tripe is offal cookery of the oldest kind, and its presence in a Waldorf-Astoria book says something about the range of a grand hotel kitchen around 1900 — the same brigade that turned out canvasback and terrapin also had to feed a menu of plain grills and chophouse standbys, and tripe was a cheap, respectable supper dish on both sides of the Atlantic. The preliminary boil in milk and water is an old English habit, often linked to the days when butchers sold tripe already dressed and part-cooked, so that the cook's job was reheating rather than tenderising. Broiled and buttered like this it belongs to the same family as devilled kidneys and grilled bones: plain food of the kind that turned up on supper cards.