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Side Club Style

Frog legs sautéed in butter, clam juice, and thick cream, thickened with butter and flour, served with dry toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Side Club Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the frog legs at their joints and remove all bones.

  2. Heat the butter in a sauté pan over medium heat.

  3. Season the frog legs and add them to the hot butter, stirring frequently.

Make the sauce

  1. After 5 minutes, add the clam juice and thick cream, and bring to a boil.

  2. Thicken the mixture with the butter kneaded with flour.

Serve

  1. Serve with dry toast on the side.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + clamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together840 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Clam + creamtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

Frog legs
Provide the main protein, which turns tender and firm as it cooks in butter.
Butter
Carries the heat and adds richness and a nutty, browned flavour to the legs.
Clam juice
Adds a savoury, briny depth that flavours the sauce.
Thick cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a smooth, silky texture.
Butter kneaded with flour
Thickens the sauce as the flour starch swells in the hot liquid.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with the butter kneaded with flour. Flour thickens only when heated enough for its starch to swell. Whisk the kneaded butter in small pieces into a boiling sauce so it dissolves evenly and does not form lumps.

“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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