Fried Tripe
Dredge with flour, or dip in egg and cracker crumbs, fry in hot butter, or other fat, until a delicate brown on both sides, lay it on a dish, add vinegar to the gravy, and pour over the tripe (or, the vinegar may be omitted, and the gravy added, or the tripe may be served without vinegar or gravy). Or make a batter by mixing gradually one cup of flour with one of sweet milk, then add an egg well beaten and a little salt; drain the tripe, dip in batter, and fry in hot drippings or lard. Salt pork and pig's-feet may be cooked by the same rule. In buying tripe get the "honey-combed." To fricassee tripe, cut it in narrow strips, add water or milk to it, and a good bit of butter rolled in flour, season with pepper and a little salt, let simmer slowly for some time, and serve hot garnished with parsley.
A short recipe that assumes something modern shoppers cannot: that the tripe arrived at the kitchen already dressed and boiled tender. Everything else here is straightforward pan work.
- The hinge: tripe must be tender firstTripe of the period was generally sold already dressed — scalded and cleaned, and often part-boiled — so it needed little more than browning. Tripe bought today may be cleaned but raw; simmer it until a knife goes through easily, often 1.5 to 3 hours, before it goes anywhere near the batter. Frying raw tripe produces something closer to a rubber band.
- "Honey-combed"This is the second stomach compartment, still sold as honeycomb tripe and generally reckoned the most tender and best-flavoured; its pockets hold batter and gravy. Blanket (plain) and book tripe are usually considered tougher.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh unsoured milk, as opposed to the buttermilk or clabber that was equally common in the pantry. Whole milk is the closest match.
- Drippings and lardBoth are meat fats with a high smoke point. Lard is still sold; bacon drippings work, or use a neutral oil at about 350-365F for the batter version. Butter alone, as in the first method, will brown fast — clarified butter, or butter cut with oil, is steadier.
- Dry the tripe"Drain the tripe" is doing real work. Boiled tripe holds a great deal of water; pat it thoroughly dry or the flour dredge slides off and the batter spits in the fat.
- The vinegar gravyDeglazing the pan with a splash of cider or malt vinegar makes a sharp pan sauce that cuts the fat and gelatin. A tablespoon or two is plenty; add it off the heat and swirl.
- The fricassee variation"Simmer slowly for some time" means 30-45 minutes if the tripe is already tender, longer if not. The butter rolled in flour is a beurre manié — work equal weights together cold and whisk it in near the end so the sauce thickens without lumps.
- YieldFigure 6-8 oz of dressed tripe per person as a main course; the batter given here coats roughly 1.5 to 2 lb.
Tripe was cheap protein and appears in many American household books of the period, usually with the assumption that the butcher had done the long, smelly work of cleaning and boiling it — a division of labor that has largely disappeared, which is why the recipe reads as though tripe cooks in ten minutes. The pairing with vinegar is very old and very practical: acid balances the gelatinous richness of stomach lining, and the same logic runs through Norman tripes à la mode de Caen with cider and the vinegar cruet set beside tripe suppers in the north of England. That the recipe extends the method to salt pork and pig's feet says a good deal about the book's economics: one frying technique, applied across whatever cheap cuts the household had, with honeycomb tripe singled out for its tenderness.