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Frogs Stewed

A stew of frog legs cooked in butter, flour, herbs, and cream, finished with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and summer savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 241 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Frogs Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and skin the frog legs, then parboil them for about 3 minutes and drain.

Make the gravy

  1. In a stew pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the frog legs and fry for about 2 minutes, stirring to prevent burning.

  3. Sprinkle the flour over the frog legs and stir it in.

  4. Add the parsley, summer savory, bay leaf, onion, salt, pepper, hot water, and cream.

  5. Boil gently until cooked through.

  6. Remove the legs, strain the gravy, and mix in the beaten egg yolks.

Serve

  1. Place the legs in a serving dish, pour the gravy over them, 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. Parsley + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Flour + summer savorytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together263 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Summer savory + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together671 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Summer savory + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together299 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Frog legs
Provide the tender meat that is cooked through in the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and carries the flavour of the frying step.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth gravy as it cooks.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the gravy.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the strained gravy, giving it a silkier texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the gravy is too hot they can scramble and turn grainy. Stir them in off the heat or over very low heat to keep the sauce smooth.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, parsley, summer savory, pepper, cream, 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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