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Sunday 18 November 2018

Tripe

Tripe is the stomach lining of farm animals, which is served as food. Most tripe is from cattle and sheep.

Tripe is sold "dressed", where the stomachs are cleaned and the fat trimmed off. It is then boiled and bleached, giving it the white color more commonly associated with the offal as seen on market stalls and in butchers shops

Tripe in an Italian market


Cows have four stomachs but tripe is generally made only from the first three chambers. The rumen ("blanket") tripe comes from the first stomach,  the reticulum ("honeycomb") tripe from the second and the omasum ("book, bible or leaf") tripe from the third.

The word "tripe" comes from an 14th Century French term for guts and entrails. It has been used as a term of abuse for anything worthless since the 16th century.

The Taming Of The Shrew is the only Shakespeare play that specifically mentions eating tripe. 
Katherine. Oh, lovely. Can I have some? 
Grumio I fear it is too choleric a meat. How say you to a fat tripe finely broiled?

In Henry IV Part 2, Doll Tearsheet calls First Beadle a "tripe-visag'd rascal".

In his diary for October 24, 1662, Samuel Pepys reports eating, "a most excellent dish of tripes of my own directing, covered with mustard." In tribute to this, the Tripe Marketing Board, has declared October 24th to be World Tripe Day. 

Soto babat, an Indonesian spicy tripe soup. Gunawan Kartapranata 

Pepy's diary entry for April 9, 1664 reports him eating tripe for dinner but later, "I found myself sick in my stomach and vomited, which I do not use to do."

George Orwell wrote The Road to Wigan Pier in 1937 after being given an advance by publisher Victor Gollancz to look at the lives of industrial workers in the north of England. During his time researching the book, Orwell had unbelievably squalid digs over a tripe shop in Wigan.

Dressed tripe was a popular, nutritious and cheap meat for the British working classes from Victorian times until the 1950s. The increased affluence of postwar Britain reduced the appeal of this once staple dish, where it is now mainly regarded as pet food. 

Tripe remains a popular dish in many parts of continental Europe such as France where it is sold in most supermarkets as tripes à la mode de Caen.

Tripe is a popular street food in parts of China.

Chinese tripe dish. Pixabay

Tripe is a nutritious dish at just about 96 calories per 4 oz portion, and low in total fat. It is an excellent source of zinc and vitamin B-12.

Nelson Mandela's favorite dish was tripe. It was included on the menu for his 94th birthday

Source Daily Express

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