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Frogs' Hind Legs
Trim and clean. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, dip in crumbs, egg, and crumbs again, then fry three minutes in deep fat, and drain.
A bare-bones Fannie Farmer entry that assumes you know how deep frying works and that you have frogs. The technique is sound; almost everything unstated is about temperature and sourcing.
- Fat temperatureThe book gives no thermometer reading; period practice was to test the fat by browning a cube of bread. For breaded raw foods that corresponds to fat around 375F, hot enough that three minutes cooks the leg through and browns the crumbs. Much cooler and the coating soaks and the legs steam rather than fry.
- Three minutes is rightThis timing does not need lengthening. Frog legs are lean and thin; the meat is done the moment it turns opaque and pulls slightly from the bone. Six or eight minutes leaves them stringy and dry.
- Size matters more than the clockThree minutes assumes pairs of legs from a medium bullfrog, an inch or so through the thigh. Very large legs are best split at the joint so the thick part is not still translucent when the crumbs are brown.
- "Trim and clean"Frog legs are sold skinned and paired. Trim off the feet if still attached and snip away the membrane at the hip, then rinse and dry thoroughly, since wet legs will not hold the coating.
- CrumbsPeriod breadcrumbs were dried stale bread, finer and denser than modern panko. Either works; the crumb-egg-crumb order given is correct and gives a coating that will not slide off in the fat. Loosen the egg with a spoonful of water or milk.
- SourcingFarmed frog legs, usually imported and frozen, are what you will find. Thaw completely and pat dry. Wild-caught legs in the United States are regulated by state season and species; do not substitute wild frogs casually.
- Yield and servingReckon roughly six to eight pairs of legs per person as a course, half that as an appetizer. The recipe names no accompaniment; lemon, tartare sauce, or drawn-butter sauce -- all standard fried-fish partners in the book -- would suit.
Frogs' legs appear in Fannie Farmer's book without fuss and without apology: just crumb it and fry it. The recipe sits among the fish chapters, perhaps simply because frogs, like oysters and terrapin, were a wild-caught local food before they were a delicacy. The title's precision is worth noting -- only the hind legs carry enough meat to bother with, and market frogs were sold as skinned pairs, which is still how you buy them. Bullfrogs were harvested commercially from ponds and marshes across the eastern states in this period, heavily enough that frog farming was being promoted as a business by the early twentieth century; today nearly all legs sold in the United States are imported from Asian aquaculture.