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Frogs' Legs

Frogs' legs cooked in butter, flour, cream, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter 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 ↓

Frogs' Legs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Add the cream and mix well.

Cook

  1. Season the frogs' legs with salt and pepper.

  2. Place the seasoned frogs' legs in the chafing dish.

  3. Cover and cook for about 20 minutes.

  4. If needed, add a little more cream.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in the sauce until tender.
Butter
Provides fat and richness, and forms the base for the roux.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Cream
Supplies moisture and richness, forming the body of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the flour into the butter until smooth. Flour added to melted fat must be stirred in fully so it cooks evenly and forms a roux. Lumps left unincorporated stay raw-tasting and do not thicken the sauce evenly. Adding cream only after the roux is smooth helps prevent clumping.

“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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