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Broiled Frogs' Legs

Broiled frogs' legs seasoned with olive oil, lemon, salt, pepper, parsley, butter, and lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Broiled Frogs' Legs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and wipe the frogs' legs, trimming off the bones of the claws.

  2. Prepare a marina with olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

  3. Roll the legs in the marina and place them on a broiler.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil for 5 minutes on each side until rich brown.

  2. Mix parsley, butter, and lemon juice to make a sauce.

  3. Serve the frogs' legs on a hot plate and spread with the sauce.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

  5. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Frogs' legs
Provide the main meat, which cooks to a firm, tender texture under high heat.
Olive oil
Carries the marinade and helps the surface brown evenly under the broiler.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps tenderise the surface of the meat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the finishing sauce, giving it a smooth, rounded flavour.

The step that matters

Broiling until rich brown. Broiling is intense, direct heat, so the legs can dry out or scorch before they are cooked through. Turning them once and watching the colour keeps the meat moist while the surface browns.

“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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