Skip to main content
Main

Frogs Stewed

A stew of frog quarters cooked with butter, flour, parsley, savory, bay leaf, onion, water, cream, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and summer savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 241 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Frogs Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the frogs

  1. Wash and skin the frog quarters, parboil them about three minutes, drain them.

  2. Put two ounces of butter into a stewpan.

  3. When the butter is melted, lay the frogs in the pan and fry about two minutes, stirring to prevent burning.

Make the gravy

  1. Shake over the frogs a tablespoonful of sifted flour and stir it into them.

  2. Add a sprig of parsley, a pinch of powdered summer savory, a bay leaf, three slices of onion, salt, pepper, a cup of hot water, and one cup of cream.

  3. Boil gently until done.

  4. Remove the legs and strain the liquid.

  5. Mix the yolks of two eggs, well beaten to a cream, into the gravy.

Serve

  1. Put the legs in a suitable dish.

  2. Pour the gravy over the legs.

  3. Serve.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

688Calories
21 gProtein
18 gFat
108 gCarbs

Counts 8 of 10 ingredients. The other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 8 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Bay Leaf1 leaf (0.6g)2
Parsley1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)1
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Summer Savorynot in our table0
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Flour + summer savorytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together263 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Summer savory + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together671 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Onion + summer savorytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together299 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melted fat that fries the frogs and gives the gravy a rich flavour.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it stirs into the fat.
Eggs
Egg yolks beaten into the gravy thicken it and add richness.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Mix the yolks into the gravy. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can curdle if the gravy is boiling. Remove the pan from the heat or keep it barely warm while stirring them in so the gravy becomes smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, parsley, summer savory, egg, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, parsley, summer savory, egg, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes