Choice Cuts

by Mark Kurlansky

  Not even my children really liked it, although studiously conditioned reflexes forced them to taste it in various guises and countries and to give fair judgment, which in their case was NO.

  Friends tell me that they hate tripe because they, in turn, were forced to eat it when young or saw too much of it in fraternity boardinghouses as an “economy meat”: reasons like that.

  I could claim a childhood trauma if I needed to, and I admit that I did not face a dish of tripe from my grandmother’s death until I was a good decade from it. In modern lingo, tripe-wise I lay fallow. The old lady, gastronomical dictator appointed by her own vision of Righteous Christian Living, a Nervous Stomach, and the fact that she more than generously shared the expenses of our exploding household, for some reason approved of eating the inner linings of an ox’s first and second bellies.

  In Larousse Gastronomique, where tripe is classified as “Offal,” there is news for Grandmother. (She would dismiss it as foreign nonsense, of course.) “Rich in gelatine, tripe needs prolonged cooking,” says the culinary scripture, “and is not easy to digest, so that it has no place in the diet of the dyspeptic [or] sufferers from gout.” I sense that my dam was practicing upon herself and us a kind of sympathetic medicine to request that tripe be prepared and served (to be brave, eat a lion’s heart; to remain shy and timid, eat violets in a salad, and so on …). Oxen are reputedly serene and docile, and she had a digestive system that ranked her among the leaders in Battle Creek’s regular army of malnourished missionaries and would have honored her with a front seat at any late-Victorian spa in farther waters, like Vichy or Baden-Baden. The reasoning, perhaps: since an ox has not one but two pieces of equipment for his continuous ruminative consumption of the grains and grasses known also to be salubrious for man, why would partaking of some of his actual stomach not help Mrs. Holbrook’s own unhappy organ?

  Ergo.

  Q.E.D.

  Ecco.

  Which we did and were, but apparently not enough to give me the same stubborn dislike for tripe that most of my friends claim. My grandmother unwittingly enjoyed perfect digestion, thanks to her constant attention to it, and it is no more than her due reward if she believed that her hypersensitive innards would and could assimilate this delicate honeycomb of animal muscle, with gastric gratitude if not pleasure. She did not believe in the latter anyway, as part of a true and upright life, and as for the hinted danger of gout, only gentlemen had that, in her days of rigid divisions of the sexual hazards of existence.

  When I was little, there was only one way to serve tripe fit to eat, i.e., fit for Grandmother to eat. It was seldom prepared when my mother was feeling fit enough herself to maintain some control over the menus, but when she was low in our private pecking order we ate it fairly often. My father, quietly and successfully determined to remain cock of the roost with dignity, always found it commendable, or at least edible. The recipe for it, if I felt sturdy enough to give it in correct form, would start with boiling the rubbery reticulum in pieces, draining it too casually, and dousing it with something called White Sauce which was and will remain in the same class as my grandmother’s Boiled Dressing. The dish was at best a faintly odorous and watery challenge to one’s innate sense of the fitness of things.

  I recognize that such experiences can lead to cynicism, or the analyst’s couch. In my own case, they seem mainly to have stiffened my wish to prove them mistaken, and I am now a happy if occasionally frustrated tripe eater.

  I had a good beginning, the second time around (really a kind of ghost laying), at Crespin in Dijon. The small restaurant is gone now, but for a long time it served some of the simplest and lustiest meals I have ever eaten, especially on market days for the wine people who came in from all that part of Burgundy to talk about casks, corks, sulphates.

  There were always snails at Crespin, of course, except in exceptionally hot weather, and in the cool months oysters out on the sidewalk in kelpy baskets, and all downed by the dozens. There was the classical green salad to scour the maw, and always a good plain tart of seasonal fruits if one could still face it. I remember some cheeses in the winter. And then there were sealed casseroles of tripes à la mode de Caen véritable.

  Those casseroles, for two or six or eight people, seemed to possess the inexpressible cachet of a numbered duck at the Tour d’Argent, or a small perfect octahedral diamond from Kimberley. They were unsealed at the table. The vapor hissed out, and the whole dish seethed. Plates were too hot to touch bare-handed, to keep the sauce from turning as gluey as a good ox would need it to be (at a temperature more suited to his own digestion). It was served with soup spoons as well as knives and forks, and plenty of crusty bread lay alongside. It was a fine experience.

  Crespin, with its hoary monstrous old oyster opener always there on the wintery sidewalk, his hands the most scarred I have ever seen and still perhaps the surest in the way he handled the Portugaises, the green Marennes, upon their dank beds of fresh seaweed … Crespin and the old man and even the ruddy marketers are gone, except on my own mind’s palate.

  The last time I went there, I was alone. It was a strange feeling at first. I was in Dijon late in the 1950‧s, to go again to the Foire Gastronomique. The town was jumping, quasi-hysterical, injected with a mysterious supercharge of medieval pomp and Madison-Avenue-via-Paris commercialism. I went to several banquets where ornate symbols were pinned and bestowed, with dignitaries several levels above me in the ferocious protocol of eating and drinking, and then I went by myself to the restaurant I wanted to be in once more.

  In the small, low room there was a great hum and fume, like market day but even better, and every table but one was occupied by large, red-faced, happy, loud Burgundians. My table was empty, and it seemed indicated by the gods that I had come to sit at it. I had sat there many times before, and never would again. It was a little apart but not obtrusively so, up a step like the fantastic banquet boards still cluttered and heavy at the official feastings, but pleasantly enclosed on three sides, with the white window curtains at my back. If I had not come, a potted plant would have been set neatly in my place, I know. I felt pleased to be there instead, and as usual I was awed by my continuing good luck in life, especially now and then.

  I think I ate a few snails, to stay in the picture. (The old scarred oysterman was not there, it being early November and very warm.…) Then, although after all the banquets I felt about as hungry as a sated moth, I ordered a small and ritual casserole of tripes.

  They were as good as they had ever been some decades or centuries ago on my private calendar. They hissed and sizzled with delicate authority. Nobody paid any attention to my introspective and alcoved sensuality, and the general noise beat with provincial lustiness in the packed room, and an accordionist I had last seen in Marseille slid in from the frenzied streets and added to the wildness, somewhat hopelessly. When he saw me digging into my little pot of tripe, he nodded, recognizing me as a fellow wanderer. I asked him if he would have a drink, as he twiddled out near-logical tunes on the instrument he wore like a child on his belly. He looked full at me and said, “Sometime a pastis at the Old Port.” I have not yet met him there again, but it is almost doubtless that I shall.

  I could not know that the next time I returned, lemminglike, to the dank old town, Crespin and the white curtains and all of it would be gone, but it is. It is too bad to explain.

  The classical recipes for preparing tripe can be found in any good cookbook, which someone who has read this far will already know and be able to consult. I myself like the French methods, but there are excellent ones in almost every culture which permit the use of this type of animal meat. Here is a good one which is fresh to the taste, adapted from the “Trippa alla Petronius” served currently in a London restaurant called Tiberio:

  Tripe Petronius

  3 pounds tripe, previously

  boiled until tender

  4 medium-sized carrots chopped very fine

  3 sticks of celery chopped

/>   very fine

  3 large onions chopped

  very fine

  ¾ cup butter

  4 tablespoons tomato puree

  1 glass (6 to 8 ounces) dry white wine

  ½ glass olive oil

  2 cloves of garlic, minced

  ½ cup chopped fresh parsley

  ½ cup chopped fresh basil

  Drain tripe and cut into 1-inch squares. Gently brown the three vegetables in the butter. Add tomato puree and wine, and stir until sauce thickens. Add tripe and simmer slowly for 1 hour.

  In separate skillet warm olive oil, and add garlic, parsley, and basil, taking care not to overheat. Cook slowly about 5 minutes, mix quickly into tripe, and serve.

  This is a comparatively quick recipe (the true tripes à la mode de Caen may take at least twelve hours of baking), and it is very simple, which explains why it is sought after in a posh Mayfair restaurant where the clients may feel jaded. I think that the fresh herbs give it special quality, but perhaps it could be successfully tinkered with if they proved to be unprocurable. Fortunately this is seldom the case with parsley. If dried basil had to be used, one to two tablespoonfuls should be soaked in one and a half instead of one cup of wine and then drained, and I would be tempted to go a step further and use a light dry red instead of the Tiberio’s white. All this would, I fear, make the whole dish more “ordinary.”

  While I am about it, I might as well discuss why it is much easier to make things with tripe now than it was a hundred or so years ago, or when I myself was little. I do this in a missionary spirit, convinced that they can be very good to eat and should be less shunned in our country. In these days tripe is almost always taken through its first tedious cleansings in special rooms, at the wholesale butchers’ factories. My friend Remo, “meatman and mentor,” says somewhat cryptically that the stuff is subjected to enormous pressure, which I assume means with steam. It is then trimmed to a uniform niceness, wrapped in bundles rather like large pallid grape leaves, and delivered fresh or quick-frozen to the markets where there is any demand for it.

  Once the cook takes over from the butcher, this modern treatment makes it possible to prepare tripe for any dish in an hour or a little more, by washing it well and then simmering it in ample water flavored to taste with carrots, onion, celery, herbs. When tender but not too soft it is drained, and then AVANTI, EN AVANT, FORWARD! Here is the older method, perhaps to shame some of us into trying our luck for a change, recommended in 1867 by the expatriate Pierre Blot, in his Hand-Book of Practical Cookery, for Ladies and Professional Cooks. Containing the Whole Science and Art of Preparing Human Food:

  TRIPE

  How to clean and prepare. Scrape and wash it well several times in boiling water, changing the water every time, then put in very cold water for about twelve hours, changing the water two or three times; place it in a pan, cover it with cold water; season with parsley, chives, onions, one or two cloves of garlic, cloves, salt, and pepper; boil gently five hours, take out and drain.

  When I was a child I felt a somewhat macabre interest in watching our cook go into this old routine. It started in a washtub, with much sloshing with big scrub brushes and whackings at the slippery ivory-white rubber. Then I am sure that baking soda was put into a couple of the several changes of water, making things foam in an evil way … I suppose a battle with some of the digestive juices my grandmother counted on? For the last cool soaking, handfuls of salt were thrown in, or so it now seems to me. But I am downright sure that in our house there was no fancy nonsense of herbs and suchlike in the final slow boiling. Plain fare with a good white sauce, that is what we were served. “Eat what’s set before you, and be thankful for it,” was the gastronomical motto that quivered always in the air above our table while Grandmother sat there, and with a certain amount of philosophical acceptance it can be a good one, the whole chancy way.

  —from With Bold Knife and Fork, 1968

  GRIMOD DE LA REYNIÈRE ON PIGS

  Much like the pig, Grimod de la Reynière has a historic importance far greater than his current reputation. In France, his most often quoted, though seldom attributed, statement is “tout est bon dans un cochon,” everything is good on a pig.

  —M.K.

  The value of a pig is so widely recognized, its usefulness in cooking so deeply felt, that it would be superfluous to sing its praises. It is the king of animals, the one whose empire is the most universal, whose qualities are the least questioned. Without it there is no lard, and consequently no cooking, without it there are no hams, no sausages, no andouilles, no blood sausage, and consequently no charcuteries. Doctors like to say that the meat is indigestible, heavy, and laxative. We will leave the doctors to their whining; they are angry that no one is listening because the pig is, as far as indigestion is concerned, one of the most sparkling jewels on the crown. Jews, on the other hand, look on pork with horror, and a lot of Christians these days are virtually Jews, not eating blood sausage and andouilles. In fact, though the pork products are much better in Lyons and Troyes than in Paris, our charcuteries are triumphing over all obstacles and their recipes and styles have emerged as leaders in the art of making from a pig the most varied, the wisest, and the most exquisite recipes.

  Nature in its perfection arranged it that everything on a pig is good [tout est bon dans un cochon] and there is nothing to throw away. The arts share with food the honor of using the bristles; and if Mr. Corps and Mr. Jean (two of Paris’s leading charcutiers) owe their fortune to its flesh, the bristles on its back became the tool of glory for Raphael, nor have they been useless to Rameau.

  The pig is the civilized version of the wild boar—in fact, what a boar has been reduced to by castration and slavery. But that degradation has been to the advantage of our sensuality, and the peace-loving, sociable qualities of the one seem, at least in the kitchen, preferable to the wild, republican virtues of the other.

  —from Almanach des Gourmands, 1804,

  translated from the French by Mark Kurlansky

  APICIUS ON SOW’S BELLY AND FIG-FED PORK LIVER

  Sow’s Belly

  Sow’s udder or belly with the paps on it is prepared in this manner: the belly boil, tie it together with reeds, sprinkle with salt and place it in the oven, or, start roasting on the gridiron. Crush pepper, lovage, with broth, pure wine, adding raisin wine to taste, thicken [the sauce] with roux and pour it over the roast.

  Stuffed Sow’s Belly

  Full sow’s belly is stuffed with crushed pepper, carraway, salt mussels; sew the belly tight and roast. Enjoy this with a brine sauce and mustard.

  Wine Sauce for Fig-Fed Pork

  Fig-fed pork liver (that is, liver crammed with figs) is prepared in a wine sauce with pepper, thyme, lovage, broth, a little wine and oil.

  —first century A.D.,

  translated from the Latin by Joseph Dommers Vehling

  MRS. BEETON ON SHEEP

  Isabella Beeton, popularly known for the past century and a half as Mrs. Beeton, was a woman ahead of her time. Her recipes gave exact measurements and cooking times four decades before Fannie Farmer was credited with establishing the concept. The eldest of twenty-one children, she married magazine publisher Samuel Beeton when she was nineteen. She became a true partner in his business—translating, proofreading, doing layouts, and writing a weekly column on fashion and food. In 1861 they published the first edition of Beeton’s Book of Household Management, a book in the tradition of Le Mésnagier de Paris, and it quickly sold sixty thousand copies. It has been a standard reference of the English-speaking world ever since, sometimes titled Mrs. Beeton’s Cookery Book. Mrs. Beeton died not long after publication at the age of twenty-eight, following the birth of her fourth child.

  —M.K.

  Of all wild or domesticated animals, the sheep is, without exception, the most useful to man as a food, and the most necessary to his health and comfort; for it not only supplies him with the lightest and most nutritious of meats, but, in the absence of the co
w, its udder yields him milk, cream, and a sound though inferior cheese; while from its fat he obtains light, and from its fleece broadcloth, kerseymere, blankets, gloves, and hose. Its bones when burnt make an animal charcoal—ivory black—to polish his boots, and when powdered, a manure for the cultivation of his wheat; the skin, either split or whole, is made into a mat for his carriage, a housing for his horse, or a lining for his hat, and many other useful purposes besides, being extensively employed in the manufacture of parchment; and finally, when oppressed by care and sorrow, the harmonious strains that carry such soothing contentment to the heart, are elicited from the musical strings, prepared almost exclusively from the intestines of the sheep.

  This valuable animal, of which England is estimated to maintain an average stock of 32,000,000, belongs to the class already indicated under the ox,—the Mammalia; to the order of Rumenantia, or cud-chewing animal; to the tribe of Capridœ, or horned quadrupeds; and the genus Ovis, or the “sheep.” The sheep may be either with or without horns; when present, however, they have always this peculiarity, that they spring from a triangular base, are spiral in form, and lateral, at the side of the head, in situation. The fleece of the sheep is of two sorts, either short and harsh, or soft and woolly; the wool always preponderating in an exact ratio to the care, attention, and amount of domestication bestowed on the animal. The generic peculiarities of the sheep are the triangular and spiral form of the horns, always larger in the male when present, but absent in the most cultivated species; having sinuses at the base of all the toes of the four feet, with two rudimentary hoofs on the fore legs, two inguinal teats to the udder, with a short tail in the wild breed, but of varying length in the domesticated; have no incisor teeth in the upper jaw, but in their place a hard elastic cushion along the margin of the gum, on which the animal nips and breaks the herbage on which it feeds; in the lower jaw there are eight incisor teeth and six molars on each side of both jaws, making in all 32 teeth. The fleece consists of two coats, one to keep the animal warm, the other to carry off the water without wetting the skin. The first is of wool, the weight and fineness of which depend on the quality of the pasture and the care bestowed on the flock; the other of hair, that pierces the wool and overlaps it, and is in excess in exact proportion to the badness of the keep and inattention with which the animal is treated.