No. 1476

Tripe, Parisian Style

Gras-double a la Parisienne

Cut Julienne-shaped some carrots and celery roots, blanch them, drain and fry them in lard with minced onions and leeks; add the quarter of the same quantity of mushrooms cut into three-sixteenth inch squares, and two pounds of tripe cut into strips one inch and a half by one-quarter of an inch, and season with salt, pepper, a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme, bay leaf and a clove of garlic. Moisten to the height of the tripe with broth, boil up once, and then place it in the oven for one hour; skim off the fat, reduce the stock with a tomato sauce and soubise sauce; serve up the tripe, pouring the reduced sauce over.

← No. 1475 Tripe Lyonnaise Beef No. 1477 Tripe Paupiettes →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a kitchen where tripe arrives already dressed and hours-boiled, so his hour in the oven is a finishing step rather than the cooking. That assumption is the whole recipe.

Start with tripe that is already tenderSupermarket honeycomb tripe is cleaned and bleached but usually still raw or only briefly scalded. Simmer it in water or broth until a strip yields easily to a knife -- commonly 2 to 3 hours -- then cut it into strips and proceed. Going straight into the oven for one hour gives rubber bands.
Gras-doubleThe French term for beef tripe dressed and scalded ready for cooking; it usually refers to the rumen or paunch rather than to any one chamber in particular. Honeycomb tripe is the easiest modern substitute: it holds sauce well and cuts into neat strips.
Celery rootsCeleriac, not celery stalks. One medium bulb, peeled hard to remove the fibrous outer layer, matches two or three carrots for a batch this size.
Oven heatThe recipe gives no oven setting, as was usual for a coal range. Covered, something in the region of 325 to 350F should hold a bare simmer for the hour without reducing the broth away.
Soubise sauceAn onion purée bound with béchamel or velouté -- onions sweated in butter until completely soft, sieved or blended, thinned with white sauce. It is what makes the finished sauce pale and sweet against the tomato. A few spoonfuls of each sauce is enough; the reduced cooking broth carries the dish.
Lard and the fatLard gives the right flavour, but butter or a neutral oil works. Skimming after the oven matters more than the choice of fat: tripe releases a good deal of gelatin and fat, and the sauce will not reduce cleanly until the fat is off.
The bunch of parsleyA bouquet garni -- parsley stems tied around thyme and a bay leaf, with the garlic clove. Tie it with string so it comes out whole before the sauce is reduced.
YieldTwo pounds of tripe with the vegetables serves four generously as a main course, six as part of a longer menu of the kind this book was written for.

A Little History

Gras-double is general French usage for dressed tripe, and it was commonly sold ready-scalded by specialist triperies in the market quarters -- which is why Ranhofer, writing for Delmonico's in New York in 1894, can begin at the frying pan. The Julienne of carrot and celeriac with onion, leek and mushroom, finished with tomato and soubise, is the bourgeois Parisian treatment set against the two dishes that flank it in the book: Lyonnaise tripe and tripe paupiettes. Offal occupied a respectable stretch of the Beef chapter in a restaurant cookbook of this size because a great kitchen bought whole animals and was expected to sell every part of them, tripe among the cheapest and, handled properly, among the most admired.