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Tripe, Mode De Caen
Procure four pounds fresh honeycomb tripe and a pound fresh manyplies tripe (the thickest part) all well washed in several changes of fresh water and well drained, and one ox-foot, or two calf's feet if ox-foot is not handy. Carefully bone each foot and cut it into two-inch-square pieces. Have a thoroughly clean earthen pot, line bottom and sides with very thin slices larding pork and place cut-up tripe, etc., in pot. Add two small, very red carrots, two white onions with two cloves stuck in and half a sound, seeded green pepper. Tie in a bunch two leeks, two branches celery, three branches parsley, two branches chervil, a sprig each thyme and marjoram, a blade mace and bay leaf. Add to pot, pour in a half pint white wine, pint cider and quart white broth. Season with a heavy teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, lightly mix and cover pot. Prepare a stiff dough with a pound flour and two gills water, roll out on table to length of cover, then fasten all around joint of pot and cover so as to prevent evaporation. Place pot in a very slow oven for fifteen hours, lift up cover, carefully skim fat from surface and remove bouquet of herbs, carrots and onions. Finely chop together six sound shallots, the red part of a carrot, a bean sound garlic, two ounces raw ham and an ounce raw lean pork. Place this hash in a saucepan with a tablespoon melted butter, gently cook on fire for five minutes, lightly stirring once in a while, then pour in a half gill cognac and let briskly reduce until nearly dry. Transfer contents of pot to this pan, add a gill pure tomato juice, lightly mix with a wooden spoon and let cook rather slowly for forty-five minutes. Dress tripe on a deep hot dish, sprinkle a little freshly chopped parsley over, send to table very hot, with twelve slices of toasted French bread, and serve separately.
N.B. After all meat has been cut off from ox-foot or calf's feet, place foot or feet in soup pot.
A true tripes à la mode de Caen, written for a coal range that held low heat overnight. The method translates cleanly to a modern oven, but the tripe you can buy has already been through most of the work.
- The hinge: the sealed potThe flour-and-water paste luting the lid is not decoration. Nothing should evaporate over the long cook, so the liquid stays barely at a tremble and the tripe softens rather than reduces. A tight Dutch oven with a sheet of parchment or foil crimped under the lid does the same job; the paste is worth making if your lid rattles.
- Oven temperature"A very slow oven" here means 250-275F. At that heat the pot should never come to more than the faintest movement at the edges.
- Cooking timeFifteen hours assumed raw tripe straight from the butcher. Most tripe sold in the US and UK today has already been cleaned and scalded, often bleached, and partly cooked; 5 to 7 hours at 275F should bring it to the wobbling, translucent stage. Check at five hours and stop when a knife goes through with no resistance.
- The two tripesHoneycomb is the reticulum. "Manyplies" is the omasum, sold as bible or book tripe, and it stays firmer, which is why it is here in smaller quantity. Rinse both in several changes of cold water regardless of how clean they look, and cut into rough pieces — the recipe's two-inch measurement is given for the boned feet, not the tripe.
- Ox-footBeef foot is the gelatin engine of the dish and is worth ordering from a halal or Latin butcher; two split calf's feet or, failing that, two pounds of meaty oxtail plus a split pig's foot will set the sauce. Without one of them the finished liquid stays thin.
- Larding pork and white brothLarding pork is unsmoked fatback or unsmoked salt pork, sliced thin; use thinly sliced pancetta or fresh pork belly if fatback is unavailable, and skip smoked bacon, which will dominate. "White broth" is an unbrowned veal or chicken stock, lightly seasoned.
- UnitsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of water is one cup for the paste, half a gill of cognac is a quarter cup, and a gill of tomato juice is half a cup. "A bean of garlic" means a piece of garlic about the size of a bean. "Very red carrots" simply means deeply coloured ones; the later instruction to chop "the red part of a carrot" is generally read as the outer flesh rather than the pale core.
- CiderNormandy cider is hard, and the drier styles are what is wanted here. Use a dry alcoholic cider, not sweet American apple cider, or the pot turns sugary over a long cook.
- Yield and serviceFour pounds of tripe plus a foot feeds eight to ten. Skim the fat thoroughly after the long cook — there will be a great deal — and serve very hot in warmed bowls, since the gelatin sets fast as it cools.
Tripes à la mode de Caen is the signature dish of Lower Normandy, and its two local markers are here in the ingredient list: cider in place of most of the wine, and calvados-country cognac (Norman cooks would use calvados). The long sealed cook is the older method, said by tradition to have been done in a potter's tripière taken to the baker's oven after the bread came out and collected the next day, and the flour paste around the lid is often explained as a survival of that arrangement — the pot was carried, jostled and left unattended. Tripe cookery of this kind belongs to the frugal end of butchery, using the stomachs and the feet, and it found a place in a book called The International Cook Book. The N.B. at the end is the authentic touch: the picked-over foot goes into the stockpot, because nothing in this kitchen was finished with once.