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Fried Frog Legs

Fried frog legs served on watercress with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Watercress and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 579 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fried Frog Legs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dip frog legs in sweet milk.

  2. Roll in seasoned flour.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry slowly in sweet butter or drippings until crisp.

  2. Serve on a bed of watercress garnished with lemon quarters.

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. Watercress + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + watercresstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Frog legs
Serve as the main protein; their mild, tender meat is the centre of the dish.
Sweet milk
Moistens the frog legs so the seasoned flour coating adheres evenly.
Seasoned flour
Forms a coating that browns and crisps in the hot fat.
Sweet butter or drippings
Frying fat that conducts heat, browns the coating, and adds rich flavour.

The step that matters

Fry slowly until crisp. Frying slowly over moderate heat lets the coating dry and brown evenly while the meat cooks through. Too much heat can scorch the flour before the inside is done, and too little leaves the coating greasy and soft.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Vanillafits about as well

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