Tripping on Tripe
Tripe: what to some is gooey, treacly, and viscid strips of boiled cow interiors is comfort food at its best for others. Tasting it for the first time is very often considered a rite of initiation to true omnivorism for real foodies.
Every aficionado always remembers their first time with what I like to call the Pale Beauty; its soft and spongy yet resilient texture paired with an haut-goût of white pepper and animal sensation and, finally, the aftertaste of cow shed lingering on for a few sweet seconds….
“The Fifth Quarter,” as connoisseurs also like to call their object of yearning, is, against popular misconception, not a part of the cow’s intestine, but in fact from the cow’s first four stomachs: the rumen, the reticulum, the omasum, and the abomasum. It needs to be thoroughly cleaned before it becomes suitable for human consumption, and then boiled for about 12 hours to be soft enough.
It’s said that the ancient Greeks ate it grilled with rosemary and other spices, whereas the Romans made a special kind of salami from it. The culture of tripe existed and still exists in many countries, but it has always had particular importance in Italian peasant culture.
It was the meat of the poor and, together with polenta, is one of the rustic staple foods. Still today, each region of the Bel Paese is proud to have several recipes featuring trippa.
Troppa Trippa, one of several websites dedicated to the star of offal, lists close to 350 different regional recipes. The most famous renditions include trippa alla romana, trippa alla livornese, trippa alla parmigiana, and trippa alla trevigiana.
The love of trippa takes interesting forms in different places. The Milanese, for instance, are said to have been referred to jokingly as busecconi (those who eat busecca, a famous tripe soup).
Those who wants to eat tripe in Italy, however, have to go to Florence. The panino al lampredotto is the city’s most important street food. This local tripe specialty is made from the cow’s fourth (and only “true”) stomach, the abomasum. It is not cooked in tomato sauce, as the trippa alla fiorentina, but simmered in stock and served on Tuscan bread with salsa verde. It is also said that many Florentine celebrities, including Dante Alighieri and Michelangelo, enjoyed their occasional load of tripe.
So, the next time you find yourself hesitating in front of a plate of tripe, face your fears and have a taste of history! (You might even enjoy it.)
I adore tripe! I remeber when I took Ric to eat them at the farmer’s market in Thessaloniki some fourteen years ago… By ten a.m., lunch for the workers and breakfast for us, white soup with a special seasoning made of vinegar, dried chilies and raw garlic. This was before the application of European sanitary rules in the market. I wonder if i will find them when I go there in october. Hugs from Germany!