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Fried Frogs

Fried frogs are boiled, breaded, and fried frog legs served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fried Frogs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the legs

  1. Boil the frog legs in salted water with a little lemon juice for 3 minutes.

  2. Remove and dry the legs.

  3. Clean off the bone ends.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip the legs in cracker dust.

  2. Dip them in a mixture of 2 beaten eggs and ½ cup milk seasoned with pepper and salt.

  3. Coat again in bread crumbs.

  4. Fry in boiling lard until golden.

  5. Serve hot and crisp on a platter.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the coating so the cracker and crumb layers stick to the legs.
Bread crumbs
Form an outer crust that browns and crisps when fried.
Cracker dust
Provides a first dry layer that the egg mixture can cling to.
Lemon juice
Adds a light acidity to the poaching water.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling lard until golden. The lard must be hot enough to crisp the coating quickly. If it is too cool, the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisp and golden.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, pepper, bread):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Cherryfits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, pepper, bread. 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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