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Stewed Frogs' Legs

A stew of frog legs simmered in milk, butter, cream, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the frog legs

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

  2. Roll the legs in peppered and salted flour.

Stew

  1. Sauté the legs in hot butter for 3 minutes.

  2. Cover the legs with hot water and stew until tender, about 20 minutes.

  3. Heat ½ cup of cream to boiling.

  4. Stir in 1 tablespoon of butter rolled in flour and boil briefly.

  5. Add the cream mixture to the saucepan with the frog legs.

  6. Season with pepper, salt, and a little chopped parsley.

  7. Cook gently for 3 minutes and serve.

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 tender meat that the dish is built around.
Flour
Coats the legs and, cooked with butter, thickens the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness when sautéing and enriches the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the finished sauce.
Milk
Softens the flesh during the initial soak before cooking.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter and flour mixture and boil briefly. Flour cooked in butter forms a roux that thickens the cream. Boiling briefly activates the starch; if the sauce is not boiled, it stays thin and can taste raw-floury.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, pepper, 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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