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Vol-au-vent of Frogs' Legs

A vol-au-vent filled with simmered frog legs in a butter, flour, and milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Vol-au-vent of Frogs' Legs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the frog legs

  1. Rinse the frogs' legs in cold water with a little salt.

  2. Par-boil the legs, then drain and simmer them in milk for 45 minutes.

  3. Once done, drain and remove the bones from the legs.

Make the sauce and serve

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

  2. Slowly add the flour, salt, pepper, and nutmeg to the melted butter.

  3. Stir in 2 cups of the milk used for boiling the frogs' legs.

  4. Add the frog meat to the mixture and keep warm until ready to serve.

  5. Fill the vol-au-vent shells just 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.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Frogs' legs
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender after simmering in milk.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it cooks with the butter.
Milk
Forms the body of the sauce and gently cooks the frog meat.

The step that matters

Stir the flour into the butter before adding the milk. Flour must be cooked briefly in melted butter to form a roux; adding it all at once or skipping the cooking can leave lumps and a raw, pasty taste.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, pepper. 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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