Home › Our Susan's Opinion of a Kitchen › Tripe
Tripe
TRIPE A LA LYONNAISE (LYONS FASHION).
When any cold tripe remains, cut it in thin slices about an inch square, and wipe it very dry. Mince two onions, put some butter (in the proportion of 3 oz to 1 lb. of tripe) into a frying-pan with the onions; when they are about half done put in the tripe, and let all fry for about ten minutes; season with pepper and salt, and three tablespoonfuls of vinegar to each pound of tripe, Serve very hot.
A leftovers dish that assumes you already have tripe cooked and chilled from the day before. Everything hinges on that assumption and on getting the tripe dry enough to brown.
- The tripe must already be tenderThis recipe is written for cold tripe — the remains of a long boil. Supermarket tripe today is scalded and bleached but still needs 1.5 to 3 hours of simmering in salted water with an onion and a bay leaf until it yields to a knife. Chill it before slicing; cold tripe cuts cleanly, warm tripe drags.
- Wipe it very dryThe single instruction that decides the dish. Tripe holds water in its honeycomb and will steam rather than brown. Press the slices between towels and leave them uncovered in the fridge for an hour if you have time.
- The butterThree ounces to the pound is about six tablespoons — generous by modern habit but it is what carries the browning and the sauce. Halving it works; use a pan wide enough that the tripe sits in one layer rather than adding more fat to compensate for crowding.
- Onions half doneRoughly five to seven minutes over medium heat: softened and just turning gold, not caramelised. They finish alongside the tripe.
- Ten minutes is a minimumTen minutes -- The tripe is already cooked, so the frying is mainly for colour and heat. The recipe's ten minutes will get the tripe hot through and lightly coloured; longer in a hot pan gives browner, frizzled edges, though the recipe does not ask for it.
- Vinegar at the very endVinegar -- Three tablespoons per pound sounds like a lot. The recipe adds it with the seasoning at the end of the frying; going into a hot pan much of it will cook off, leaving the sharpness behind. Serve immediately, as the recipe directs.
- FinishingChopped parsley is common in Lyonnais tripe dishes; this version does without it.
- YieldA pound of cooked tripe prepared this way serves two as a main course with bread and potatoes, or four as a first course.
À la lyonnaise means onions and butter, and often a splash of vinegar to cut them — the signature of Lyon, a city whose bouchons built their reputation on offal, and whose tripe dishes range from this simple refry to tablier de sapeur, the breaded and grilled "fireman's apron." A nineteenth-century North American fundraising compilation carrying a French provincial tripe recipe reflects the English cookery writing such compilers drew on, which by then treated a handful of French preparations as common property. The dish also belongs to a much older domestic logic: tripe needed hours of boiling, so it was cooked in quantity, and the second day's serving was expected to be different from the first.