[jacobolus]

“The same people who chuckle at the things done with cocktail franks and canned tuna will happily eat something like the tripe dishes common in many ethnic cuisines. Yet tripe has absolutely nothing to recommend it as a food product, except that it is practically free; almost anything you cooked with tripe would be just as good, if not better, without the tripe in it. If you understand why folks ate Trippa alla Romana, you should not be confused about the tuna casserole or the creamed chipped beef on toast. ”

Why the hate for tripe? Trippa alla Romana, menudo, phở, various Mediterranean tripe stews, fried tripe with hot sauce, etc. are delicious. Maybe the author had a traumatic experience in childhood?

Tripe has a texture unlike muscle, which makes for an interesting contrast to meat. If you took the tripe out of “anything you cooked with tripe”, you’d be left with something completely different, defeating the point of those dishes.

[jhbadger]

At least in English, the word tripe itself means "worthless", because traditionally in English-speaking countries, where meat was cheap and plentiful, people threw tripe out or fed it to their dogs. Countries like Italy and various Asian countries didn't have the luxury of cheap meat historically -- so they incorporated tripe into their cuisine. That doesn't mean that good things can't be done with it, just that the original reason for using it was that it was cheap.

[yongjik]

Damn, now I have a craving for tripe soup: https://www.google.com/search?q=%EC%96%91%EA%B3%B0%ED%83%95&...

(Remove tripe, and you end up with boiling water with green onions.)