[Sca-cooks] haggis question

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius adamantius1 at verizon.net
Fri Jan 5 10:29:01 PST 2007


On Jan 5, 2007, at 1:12 PM, Stanza693 at wmconnect.com wrote:

>
> I guess what I was really asking was since the Irish seem to have  
> been known
> to eat tripe, does anyone think they might have thought to stuff it  
> with
> something to make it more tasty?  I know, the argument that "if  
> they had the
> technology, they would have done it" doesn't fly.  However, I'm  
> still learning what
> leaps can be made logically and what are crazy figments of my  
> imagination.

In part, the problem is that it depends on what you mean by tripe;  
not all ruminant stomachs are equally good for stuffing, since as  
they cook they can become very tender and sort of gelatinous, again,  
depending n which stomach it turns out to be. The standard honeycomb  
beef tripe (which is what most people are thinking of when they hear  
"tripe", isn't the best for stuffing, but there are various other gut  
sections that are more appropriate, ranging from things like hog  
maws, which are somewhat meaty, like a giant chicken gizzard, to  
various beef middles and caps, generally actually part of the large  
intestine of the animal.

Similarly, I expect there's some difference between the various  
stomachs of a sheep which make some better for use as a large sausage  
casing than others.

> I didn't copy out the rest of the author's discussion, but she does  
> make
> mention of the fact that traditionally, sheep/pig/cow stomach was  
> eaten but that
> it is almost exclusively beef now  and that the best tripe actually  
> comes from
> the second stomach of the cow.  She says, however, that tripe is  
> very bland
> and relies on accompanying sauces for flavour.

That's true. Tripe is very rich, but doesn't have much of a  
distinctive flavor, and what it does have that is distinct is  
generally not desirable, so it's washed until it has very little  
flavor of its own.

Adamantius




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04




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