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Frogs Stewed

A stew of frog legs cooked with butter, flour, herbs, onion, water, cream, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and summer savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 241 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Frogs Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the frog legs and fry for about 2 minutes, stirring to prevent burning.

  3. Sprinkle the flour over the frogs and stir it in.

Stew and finish

  1. Add the parsley, summer savory, bay leaf, onion, salt, pepper, hot water, and cream.

  2. Boil gently until the frogs are cooked through.

  3. Remove the legs and strain the gravy.

  4. Mix the beaten egg yolks into the gravy.

  5. Place the legs in a serving dish and pour the gravy over them.

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. Parsley + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Flour + summer savorytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together263 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Summer savory + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together671 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Summer savory + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together299 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 becomes tender when gently simmered in the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour while the frog legs are first fried.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks with the liquids, giving it body.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the gravy a smooth, mellow texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the gravy when mixed in, giving it a silky texture.

The step that matters

Mixing the egg yolks into the gravy. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble if the gravy is boiling hot. Stir them in off the heat or over low heat, and avoid boiling once they are added, so the sauce stays smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, parsley, summer savory, pepper, cream, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, parsley, summer savory, pepper, cream, egg. 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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