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Frog Legs. Southern Style

A Southern-style stew of frog legs with ham, okra, tomatoes, and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Okra and tomato work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 327 recipes. Both carry damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Frog Legs. Southern Style

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Sauté frog legs in butter with minced shallots until cooked, then remove from pan.

  2. Add diced ham and chopped green pepper to the pan and cook until the ham is nearly done.

  3. Pour in chicken consommé, okra, and tomatoes, and bring to a boil.

  4. Stir in rice and cook until nearly done.

  5. Return frog legs to the pan and simmer until tender, creating a thick stew.

Serve

  1. Serve frog legs in the center of a dish with vegetables arranged around them.

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. Okra + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Shallot + okratop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Okra + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together250 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Frog legs
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender through the final simmer.
Rice
Absorbs liquid and thickens the stew as it cooks.
Okra
Releases natural starch that helps thicken the stew and adds body.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and liquid that build the stew's savory flavor.
Raw lean ham
Adds savory, salty flavor to the stew base.

The step that matters

Returning the frog legs and simmering until tender. Frog legs are already cooked once, so overcooking them in the simmer toughens the meat. Gentle simmering keeps them tender while the rice and okra thicken the stew.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, ham, pepper, chicken, okra, tomato, rice):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, ham, pepper, chicken, okra, tomato, rice. 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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