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Frog Legs, Fried

Fried frog legs coated in flour, egg, and cracker crumbs, served with lemon and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Frog Legs, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the hind legs of the frogs neatly.

  2. Sprinkle the legs with salt and pepper.

  3. Roll the legs in flour, then in beaten eggs, and finally in cracker crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in boiling fat for 6 to 8 minutes.

  2. Drain the legs, dust with salt, and arrange on a hot dish with quartered lemons and parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 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 + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Flour
Dry coating that helps the egg and crumb layers adhere to the leg.
Eggs
Liquid binder that holds the cracker crumbs to the flour-coated legs.
Cracker crumbs
Forms a crisp, browned outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Frying in boiling fat. The fat must be hot enough to crisp the crumb coating quickly. If it is too cool, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy before the meat cooks through.

“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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