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Fried Frogs' Legs

A dish of fried frog legs coated in cracker crumbs and served with parsley, hotel sauce, and Saratoga chips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,765 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fried Frogs' Legs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the frogs' legs.

  2. Dip each leg in the beaten egg.

  3. Coat each leg with cracker crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the fat until very hot.

  2. Fry the legs in the hot fat for 5 minutes.

  3. Drain the fried legs.

  4. Garnish with parsley and serve with hotel sauce and Saratoga chips.

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. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,693 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Egg + saucetop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,895 recipes

Egg and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,895 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
The main protein, which is cooked through by frying.
Beaten egg
Binds the cracker crumbs to the legs so the coating stays on during frying.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot fat.

The step that matters

Heat the fat until very hot. If the fat is not hot enough, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisping. Very hot fat seals the crumb coating quickly, so it browns and stays crisp.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sauce. 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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