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A dish of frogs seasoned with bread crumbs, sweet cream or melted butter, salt pork, and buttered toast, roasted in a dripping pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Roast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and draw the frogs.

Stuff and tie

  1. Stuff them with seasoned bread crumbs moistened with sweet cream or melted butter.

  2. Sew them up and tie a slice of salt pork around each frog.

Roast and serve

  1. Place in a dripping pan and baste with butter and water.

  2. Put slices of buttered toast under the frogs 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Cream + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb the cream or butter and form a moist, savory stuffing inside the frogs.
Sweet cream or melted butter
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffing and helps keep the meat from drying out.
Salt pork
Its fat bastes the frogs as they cook, adding flavor and moisture.
Butter
Fat for basting that promotes browning and adds richness to the surface.

The step that matters

Baste with butter and water in the dripping pan. Frog meat is lean and dries out quickly in dry heat. Regular basting with fat and liquid in the pan keeps the surface moist and promotes even browning.

“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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