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Stewed Frogs' Legs

Frog legs simmered in a creamy sauce with butter, flour, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Frogs' Legs

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin the frogs' legs and soak them in milk for 15 minutes.

  2. Roll the legs in a mixture of pepper, salt, and flour.

Stew

  1. In a skillet, melt butter and sauté the legs for 3 minutes.

  2. Add just enough hot water to cover the legs and stew until tender, about 20 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the cream to boiling, stir in butter rolled in flour, and add to the saucepan with the frogs' legs.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, and chopped parsley, and cook gently for 3 more minutes before serving.

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

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Frogs' legs
Provide the main protein, which turns tender and succulent during slow stewing.
Flour
Coats the legs and thickens the cream sauce by absorbing liquid as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor when melted for sautéing and rolled with flour as a thickener.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce, giving it a smooth, velvety texture.
Milk
Soaking in milk mellows the flavor and helps keep the meat moist.

The step that matters

Stewing until tender. Stewing the legs in just enough water until tender needs care: too little liquid can scorch them, while too much dilutes the flavor. Gentle, steady heat breaks down connective tissue slowly, keeping the meat moist rather than tough.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, pepper, flour, butter, cream. 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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