Tripe has always been, since ancient times, a very consumed and appreciated food for its modest origins. A dish that is very ancient from the poor traditional cuisine of central Italy, especially the city of Rome, a food consumed by the people more humble, because being the least valuable of the cattle, as all the offal was used in the kitchen by the most deprived persons. In fact it is told that this dish, the tripe was consumed cooked on the grill, even by the ancient Greeks.
Today, the tripe is cooked in every part of Italy from the north to the south, undergoing a number of changes, but the original recipe is the one in which the tripe is seasoned with two exceptional ingredients: roman mint and pecorino cheese, and traditionally is eaten during the Saturday lunch, so that still today in the restaurants of Trastevere you can read “Saturday tripe”.
Traditionally there are two recipes for trippa alla romana, a more “noble,” which involves cooking the tripe in the meat sauce, another for the poor, called Trastevere style, which in the past was equivalent to the fashion of poor people. The recipes are almost identical, apart from the sauce which has been replaced with a simple tomato sauce or peeled tomatoes. This is the one that today is considered to be the true trippa alla romana, ennobled also by characters well known and loved, such as the famous “sora Lella”