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Frog Legs Fricassee

A dish of frog legs cooked in butter, salt, lemon juice or vinegar, and white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Frog Legs Fricassee

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the frog legs

  1. Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Add salt and lemon juice or vinegar.

  3. Add the frog legs, cover the dish, and cook for 13 minutes over an open fire, being careful not to burn.

  4. Remove the juice from the pan.

Finish the fricassee

  1. Add the white sauce to the frog legs; if too thick, thin it with some of the removed juice.

  2. Cook for an additional 3 minutes, season to taste, and serve.

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 + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Lemon + saucetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 they cook through.
White sauce
Adds creamy body and moisture that coats the frog legs.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the pan for gentle cooking.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Cover and cook the frog legs without burning. Covering traps steam so the legs cook through evenly, while direct heat over an open fire can scorch the butter and proteins quickly. Watching the heat keeps the meat moist and the sauce free of bitter, burnt flavour.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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