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To Stew Frogs

A stew of frog hind legs cooked with butter, herbs, onion or garlic, wine, water, and finished with an egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

To Stew Frogs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin the hind legs of the frogs and parboil them for a few minutes.

  2. Fry the legs in butter until they are light brown.

Stew and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix parsley, thyme, onion (or garlic), salt, pepper, wine, and water.

  2. Pour the mixture over the frog legs and let them stew until tender.

  3. Beat the yolk of one egg and stir it in before serving hot.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hind legs of frogs
The main protein, which becomes tender through slow stewing in the liquid.
Butter
Fat that browns the legs, adding roasted flavour before the stew.
Wine
Acidity and aroma that flavour the stewing liquid and help tenderise the meat.
1 egg yolk
Stirred in at the end to enrich and thicken the sauce slightly.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens when heated gently but can curdle if the stew is boiling hot. Beat it well and stir it in off the heat or with the pot just below a simmer for a smooth, lightly thickened sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, thyme, pepper, wine, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, thyme, pepper, wine, egg. 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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