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Wales (Counties as in 1851-1901) => Wales => Caernarvonshire => Topic started by: YrElldee on Saturday 14 April 18 11:15 BST (UK)
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My 3x great grandmother was recorded in the 1861 census of Glanrafon, Bangor as a 'tripe dealer'. Can anyone throw more light into this occupation? Additional information is that she was a widow, aged 79 and her husband was a shoemaker - as was her son. Another son, Evan Edwards became a butcher in the High Street. There's an obvious link with tanning and butchering but I have seen the term 'tripe dealer' before and without these links.
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A dealer buys and sells. Tripe - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripe
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Tripe is the stomach of a cow and used to be a popular, cheap dish - my father used to like tripe and onions! So a tripe dealer would just be someone who sold tripe.
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I have a tripe dresser ancestor. I assume that he cut the tripe from the animal and/or prepared it for sale. Or maybe he sold the tripe in a shop which specialized in that rather than selling a variety of meats like a regular butcher (but then I think he would be a seller or dealer). I am only guessing.
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When I was young the popular cheap dish was chitterlins with a dash of vinegar, which are the intestines of a pig. i'd never had tripe until my OH had been demobbed and we settled in another county town, where I was surprised to see a market stall that only sold tripe = I decided it was time I tried this delicacy and was handed a tripe suitable for an unfamiliar palate. Once was enough ::)
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Chitterlings are not cheap any more, £16 a kilo now.
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There was quite a large trade in tripe and other products such as cow heels(cows feet).
The process was quite complicated as the cows stomachs were green from the grass they ate.
The tripe was bleached in huge tanks for several days and then rinsed and rinsed.
The various parts of the stomachs had names,thick seam,thin seam ,honeycomb etc.
Cows feet were similarly treated.
My mum used to make a very nourishing (no doubt ::) cowheel stew with onions and carrots etc and sometimes a bit of oxtail and OXO cube.
Left to simmer on all day in the side oven of the big black grate,potatoes added part way through and a suet crust on top for the last half an hour or so of cooking time.
I refused to eat it!
Tripe was also eaten just as it came from the tripe shop ,with salt and vinegar and tomatoes.
I refused to eat that too.
Very cheap and nourishing ,but now quite expensive I believe since the "yuppies" decided it was a posh delicacy.
U.C.P. shops(United Cattle Products)were everywhere and restaurants too.
Viktoria.
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My parents grew up in the Depression, and still ate and enjoyed such things as tripe, brains, trotters, etc. when I was growing up. I guess it stems from the concept of no waste.
I blame all these trendy cooking shows on TV. Lamb shanks is a favourite of mine, and is now quite expensive.
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As I said earlier my father loved tripe and onions served on mashed potato. I think my mother poached the tripe in milk? The smell was enough to put you off and my siblings and I refused to even taste it. In fact, my father was the only one who ate it, even my mother wouldn't touch it. ;D
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Tripe, onions and mash was a favourite of my mothers. I can't stand it but cook it very occasionally as a treet for my OH.
I used to eat chitterlings with a bit of vinegar as a child but don't think i could eat them now, not that many shops sell them.
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Viktoria's comments brought back memories. Yes we had tripe just as it came from the shop with vinegar and salad. I was always told that tripe was very good for people in poor health and those whose stomach was a bit delicate. I had an aunt who used to make cow heel stew though, happily, I never had to eat it. I couldn't eat anything like tripe now - it looks disgusting and I'm not a great meat eater anyway so the thought of it is not pleasant.
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The unappealing Mrs Booker in George Orwells Road To Wigan Pier was a Tripe dealer. Read Orwells description of her, the premises and the conditions of how the tripe was kept. It would make todays Health and Safety conscious consumers shudder with disbelief!
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https://youtu.be/YAlGGWVOikM
Gordon Ramsay
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WOW!!
Thank you all. I didn't expect such a rich and informative source of information. i think my 3x great grandmother sold tripe as a 'take away' - already cooked and sold to the navvies who were building the railway in Bangor in the 19th c.
I have tasted it on a cycling trip to Normandy in the autumn. It was called Tripe de Caen and it was knee deep in cider and calvados! The chef explained that the windfall apples were eaten by the cow before being slaughtered and this added to the taste.
Thank you all so much.
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I used to love tripe and onions, or the other kind of tripe eaten cold with vinegar when I was a child. However, I couldn't stand chitterlings or pig's trotters or cow heel (too slimy), brain was OK, tongue I like and still do.
I asked for tripe in a restaurant in France once, and it was disgusting. I think it might have been chitterlings, anyhow I sent it back and ordered something else. Being French, they didn't mind and didn't charge me for two meals either.
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In 1977 I was advised to feed my kitten tripe cooked in milk.
I used the pressure cooker, but I remember how much I hated the smell.
I only did a few times as it was so awful!! :P
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Quite a few years ago we were travelling in the South of France France and booked into an Auberge or small inn. We decided to have the dish of the day each night during our short stay. Dinner that evening arrived which looked like tagliatelle or strips of pasta in a creamy sauce. I remember tasting the sauce and finding that it was absolutely delightful. I then cut a strip of what I thought was the pasta and found the taste to be truly disgusting, greasy and slimy. I called over the waiter and in my broken French asked him what it was. "Les tripes monsieur" , he said gesturing his stomach as if to indicate that it was entrails. We then upgraded ourselves from dish of the day to the a la carte menu!
Martin
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Tripe can also be treated to make handbags as this advert describes:
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I came across the ancestor of a friend whose occupation was described as Velmonger. It seems it is specifically a dealer in the entrails of calves. The word veal comes from the same origin, and also apparently the surname V e l l.
Martin
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My mum grew up in the north and loved tripe,vinegar and onions( had to be raw though)
When she met my dad and moved to London in 1947,my gran thought she'd get her tripe as a treat,but boiled it to death. I remember my mum saying that it tasted like rubber (and it didn't raw???) and it put her off for life.
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I love tripe and onions (born a Northerner!), we had it cooked, we also ate cold tripe with vinegar on it. We also used to eat brain, sweetbreads, beef tongue and oxtail. Imagine children today eating those things and enjoying them - well I didn't enjoy brain, neither did I enjoy pig's trotters or cow-heel, so slimy. Ugh.
However, like Mart 'n' Al, I ordered a tripe dish in a French restaurant. It was cooked in a tomato sauce but I couldn't eat it and had to order something else. It wasn't white tripe that I was used to it was the brownish looking stuff and the texture was something I just couldn't take to.
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How interesting that things can be made from tripe. (horrible stuff) Google gives a few links.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-scotland-22641175/cow-stomach-handbags-designed-by-edinburgh-student
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Oh my gosh --- Tripe -- this thread has made me smile.
I'm from Lancashire and tripe used to be very well known and popular here. There was a stall in the local Market Hall which sold just Tripe and Trotters. Imaginitively known as the Tripe Stall to the local population!
I could never stand the sight, smell or consistency of it - so would never partake.
However the funniest thing to me (and funniest is probably not an appropriate word in the circumstances) -- is that one of my Great Grandfathers was admitted to Whittingham Asylum in 1884 -- in his admission papers one the many strange claims the admitting Doctor said my Gt Grandfather made was that 'he managed Mr Robinson's Tripe Works at a salary of £7 a week'.
Clearly he thought managing a Tripe Works was a really important job to hold. His brother in law told the Doctor that my Gt Grandfather had never been employed at Mr Robinson's Tripe Works on any salary!
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Tobacco, tripe and trotters. No thank you. But to be fair if everyone gave up Tobacco there would be no money left for OAP's.
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Let’s face it, the Brits have a World wide reputation for being bad cooks.
Tripe is wonderful stuff if you cook it right. It should not be slimy, rubbery, or smell barnyardy. All of those things are the fault of the cook.
There are 4 stomach compartments in the cow, with the best tripe – honeycomb and book tripe coming from compartments 2 and 3 respectively. The mucosal lining is cut off and the rest is muscle and chondroitin/glucosamine – the stuff the health food types take as pills.
For the best tripe, in my opinion, go to a Cantonese Dim Sum restaurant. They usually have steamed tripe with garlic and ginger or tripe in a light curry sauce. The Chinese know their food and this is pure ambrosia.
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I was once given tripe during a brief stay in hospital. Supposedly it slips down easily. I forget whether I was able to eat any of it, but I vowed never again. Brains and sweetbreads (pancreas or thymus) are quite a different matter. Haven't seen them for years.
Apparently the four stomachs [or four compartments] are called rumen, reticulum, psalterium, and abomasum. The second means a little net, the third a book of psalms, which I suppose explains the names that Ian mentions.
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The market hall in our closest town when I was a child had a tripe stall. I believe it sold different sorts of tripe, pigs' feet, and calves feet! I did once taste the tiniest fragment of tripe, but ... never ever again!
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If we aren't careful people will be saying that we just talk a load of tripe on Rootschat!
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If we aren't careful people will be saying that we just talk a load of tripe on Rootschat!
A lot of people do Pennines ;D 8) ;D
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We must enjoy it Carol, as talking 'Tripe' in this case has taken us to page 4!