Tripe
there be few of my readers who will not at once allow that it is not only the most homely of food, but forms an ideal supper. This doctrine had not got in its work, however, in the ’sixties, at about which period the man who avowed himself an habitual tripe-eater must have been possessed of a considerable amount of nerve. Some of the supper-houses served it—such as the Albion, the Coal Hole, and more particularly, “Noakes’s,” the familiar name for the old Opera Tavern which used to face the Royal Italian Opera House, in Bow Street, Covent Garden. But the more genteel food-emporiums fought shy of tripe until within three decades of the close of the nineteenth century. Then it began to figure on the supper bills, in out-of-the-way corners; until supper-eaters in general discovered that this was not only an exceedingly cheap, but a very nourishing article of food, which did not require any special divine aid to digest. Then the price of tripe went up 75 per cent on the programmes. Then the most popular burlesque artiste of any age put the stamp of approval upon the new supper-dish, and tripe-dressing became as lucrative a profession as gold-crushing.
There is a legend afloat of an eminent actor—poor “Ned” Sothern, I fancy, as “Johnny” Toole would never have done such a thing—who bade some of his friends and acquaintance to supper, and regaled them on sundry rolls of house flannel, smothered with the orthodox onion sauce. But that is another story. Practical jokes should find no place in this volume, which is written to benefit, and not alarm, posterity. Therefore let us discuss the problem
How to Cook Tripe.
Ask for “double-tripe,” and see that the dresser gives it you nice and white. Wash it, cut into portions, and place in equal parts of milk and water, boiling fast. Remove the saucepan from the hottest part of the fire, and let the tripe keep just on the boil for an hour and a half. Serve with whole onions and onion sauce—in this work you will not be told how to manufacture onion sauce—and baked potatoes should always accompany this dish to table.
Some people like their tripe cut into strips rolled up and tied with cotton, before being placed in the saucepan; but there is really no necessity to take this further trouble. And if the cook should forget to remove the cotton before serving, you might get your tongues tied in knots. In the North Riding of Yorkshire, some of the farmers’ wives egg-and-bread-crumb fillets of tripe, and fry them in the drip of thick rashers of ham which have been fried previously. The ham is served in the centre of the dish, with the fillets around the pig-pieces. This is said to be an excellent dish, but I prefer my tripe smothered in onions, like the timid “bunny.”
Edmund Yates, in his “Reminiscences,” describes “nice, cosy, little suppers,” of which in his early youth he used to partake, at the house of his maternal grandfather, in Kentish Town. “He dined at two o’clock,” observed the late proprietor of the World, “and had the most delightful suppers at nine; suppers of sprats, or kidneys, or tripe and onions; with foaming porter and hot grog afterwards.”
I cannot share the enthusiasm possessed by some people for Sprats, as an article of diet. When very “full-blown,” the little fish make an excellent fertiliser for Marshal Niel roses; but as “winter whitebait,” or sardines they are hardly up to “Derby form.”
Sprats are not much encouraged at the fashionable hotels; and when tripe is brought to table, which is but rarely, that food is nearly always filleted, sprinkled with chopped parsley, and served with tomato sauce.
This is the sort of supper which is provided in the “gilt-edged” caravanserais of the metropolis, the following being a verbatim copy of a bill of fare at the Hotel Cecil:—