When offal seemed an awful lot tastier
SIR – Sheila Williams (Letters, April 20) suggests that tripe would send children running for shelter.
As a wartime child I recall my mother standing over the sink cleaning tripe with great care. I loved it. When I was married my wife made it abundantly clear that preparing tripe was not in her repertoire.
However, she worked just yards away from Jenners, Edinburgh’s poshest shop in that era, and discovered packs of ready-cooked tripe in its food hall – so, as long as she was not required to touch it, I could relive my childhood treat.
It was not a memorable reunion. Food rationing had long gone and being married to an excellent cook had changed my perspective on meals. Tripe rapidly became a distant memory.
George Wilkie
Hemingford Grey, Huntingdonshire
SIR – When I was 21, I had a kidney removed and spent time recuperating in hospital. Part of the treatment “to build you back up” was the provision of a daily Guinness and, once a week, a meal of (cow) tripe and chips. I don’t recall any being returned to the kitchens (and I don’t just mean the chips), at least not from our male surgical ward.
Almost 60 years later I can still be tempted by a nice plate of honeycomb tripe, tomatoes, pepper, and fresh bread and butter.
J Eric Nolan
Blackburn, Lancashire