Tripe Soup

Beef tripe boiled for hours until tender, cut into strips and served in its own milky broth, thickened with a roux and an egg-and-lemon liaison, and finished at the table with garlic vinegar and butter red with pepper: işkembe çorbası is the soup Türkiye drinks at three in the morning, and the işkembeci that serves it is a fixture of every town. It is a cousin of the Balkan škembe čorba, the Greek patsás and the Romanian ciorbă de burtă, all descended from the Ottoman kitchen, and in Istanbul it has been the standard cure for a night of rakı for as long as anyone has written about it. The tripe is the rumen, the first stomach, honeycombed and white once cleaned; the soup has the reputation of a dish for the brave, but a good bowl is mild, rich and clean, and the condiments do the work of waking you up.