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Fried Frog Legs

A dish of frog legs coated in flour, egg, and cracker crumbs, then fried and garnished with parsley and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fried Frog Legs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dry the frog legs.

  2. Roll them in flour and shake off the excess.

  3. Dip in a mixture of beaten egg and milk, seasoned with pepper and salt.

  4. Roll in very fine cracker crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in deep fat until golden brown.

  2. Garnish with minced parsley and lemon slices.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Frog legs
Main protein; the dish is built around its tender meat.
Flour
Dry coating that helps the egg mixture cling to the surface.
Beaten egg
Binds the cracker crumbs to the legs and helps the coating set and brown.
Cracker crumbs
Forms a crisp, browning outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in deep fat until golden brown. Fat that is too cool lets the coating soak up oil before it sets, leaving it greasy and pale, while the coating needs enough heat to crisp and brown quickly.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg, milk, pepper, lemon):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, milk, pepper, lemon. 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.

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