Name: To Roast
Ingredients: 62 frogs; simple bread crumbs; pepper; coarse sea salt; sweet cream or melted butter; small slice of salt pork; butter; water; buttered toast

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

Clean, draw, and stuff the frogs with seasoned bread crumbs moistened with sweet cream or melted butter.
Sew them up and tie a small slice of salt pork around each frog.

Roast and serve

Place the frogs in a dripping pan and baste with butter and water.
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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,371 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,933 recipes

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

Frogs: Form the main protein that is cooked and served as the dish.
Simple bread crumbs: Fill the cavity and soak up cream or butter, keeping the stuffing moist.
Sweet cream or melted butter: Moistens the stuffing, adding richness and softness to the filling.
Small slice of salt pork: Wrapped around each frog, it adds fat and savory flavor as it renders.
Butter: Used for basting, adding fat that promotes browning and a rich flavor.

“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.