Mondongo (Lamb Tripe in Sauce)

History

Josefina del Valle de Chacaltana's mondongo is a study in patience with tripe. She takes the thickest part of a lamb's belly and washes it again and again in hot water, scraping it each time with a knife until it has lost all odor; gives it three boilings in changes of fresh water until it falls apart under pressure; then chops it small and folds it into a sauce of onion fried in pork lard with ground garlic, the juice of a sieved tomato, a little pepper and very little cumin. The sauce is loosened with broth and bound with breadcrumb softened in milk into which egg yolks, a little vinegar and oil have been beaten; at the table, still in the pan, she stirs in a glass of cream or of good milk. The result is not a broth but a bound, almost velvety tripe fricassee.

The name states the main ingredient plainly: mondongo is the Spanish word for tripe — reference gives its etymology as uncertain, perhaps tied through mondejo and the Latin ventriculus, perhaps of Arabic origin, and defines it as 'tripe' and, in cooking, 'tripes and paunch'. As a dish, mondongo is a tripe preparation 'made from diced tripe (the stomach of a cow or pig)' found, in its better-known soup form, across 'former Spanish colonies in Latin America, Caribbean and in the Philippines'. Behind all of these lies an old Iberian offal cookery: callos, 'a stew common across Spain ... traditional to Madrid,' of beef tripe, chickpeas, blood sausage and peppers — the Peninsular habit of turning tripe tender in a seasoned sauce, from which the American mondongo descends.

What marks this Buenos Aires version is how far it sits from the tripe soup now most associated with the word. The familiar sopa de mondongo is a tomato-and-vegetable soup that may take rice or maize late in the pot and be enriched with bone marrow or hoof jelly; Chacaltana's dish keeps none of that. It is drier and richer — lamb tripe rather than the usual beef or pork, and a finishing sauce of egg yolk, breadcrumb and cream that belongs to a European, almost French, register of cookery. The single clearly New-World element on that otherwise Iberian frame is the sieved tomato worked into the fry, native and expected in a late-nineteenth-century River Plate kitchen. The recipe reaches Gorriti's 1890 compilation as one of the many stories-with-recipes her correspondents mailed in.

The evidence stops there. Whether lamb tripe, in place of the more common beef or pork, reflects a particular River Plate or household preference the text does not say. And though offal dishes like this are widely thought of as thrift cooking — the food of households that used the whole animal — no source I could open states that of mondongo specifically, so the association is left unclaimed here rather than asserted. Nor does the source establish anything about Josefina del Valle de Chacaltana beyond her city; her place, if any, in the compiler's circle stays unstated.

Ingredients

• thickest part of lamb tripe (mondongo)
• 1-2 heads onion, very finely chopped
• manteca de puerco (pork lard)
• 1 clove garlic, ground
• 1 tomato, passed through a sieve
• pepper
• cumin (cominos)
• 4 tbsp broth
• bread crumb softened in milk
• 2 egg yolks, beaten
• vinegar
• oil
• 1 glass cream of milk, or good milk

Instructions

1. Wash the thickest part of the lamb tripe repeatedly in hot water, scraping each time until it loses all odor.
2. Give it three boilings, changing and re-washing in fresh water each time; cook until it falls apart under pressure.
3. Chop the tripe into small pieces.
4. Fry finely chopped onion in pork lard with ground garlic, sieved tomato juice, a little pepper and cumin until the onion browns lightly.
5. Add four spoonfuls of broth, boil briefly, then stir in bread crumb softened in milk that holds two beaten egg yolks plus a little vinegar and oil.
6. Fold in the chopped tripe, give a half-boil, and on serving stir in a glass of milk cream or good milk.