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Frog Soup

A broth of white stock, onions, parsley, flour, pepper, salt, sherry, fried frog legs, egg yolk mixture, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Frog Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. In a pot, combine the white stock, sliced onion, parsley, flour, pepper, and salt.

  2. Simmer gently for 1 hour, then strain the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the dry sherry and the fried frogs' legs to the strained soup.

  2. Let the soup simmer for another 30 minutes.

  3. Blend the egg yolks with the hot milk and a little butter, then add to the soup.

  4. Serve the soup as hot as possible.

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

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and add richness as they set gently with the hot milk.
Flour
Thickens the stock so the soup has a fuller body.
Frogs' legs
Provide the main protein, browned in butter before going into the soup.
Dry sherry
Adds acidity and a deeper, aromatic flavour to the soup.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that carries all the other flavours.

The step that matters

Blending the egg yolks into the soup. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the soup is too hot when they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Blending them with the hot milk first and adding them gently helps keep the soup smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, flour, pepper, sherry, butter, egg, milk. 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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