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Fricasseed Frogs' Legs
Prepare twelve saddles or hindquarters of frogs as above and put them in a flat-bottomed saucepan with a little butter and a very small quantity of finely-minced shallot. Place the pan on the fire and cook until the butter begins to brown, then pour over a teacupful of sherry, cover the pan and stew for twenty minutes; skim off most of the butter and add cayenne and salt to taste. Put the yolks of four eggs and two tablespoonfuls of cream in the stock to thicken, mixing the eggs in a little of the hot liquor before adding them, and as soon as the contents of the pan show signs of boiling remove it from the fire. Place the frogs on a dish with the legs sticking out all around and the thick part forming a circle in the center; strain the sauce and pour it over them. The wine and eggs are not always used in the cooking.
A classic French fricassée — brown lightly, stew in wine, finish with an egg-and-cream liaison — applied to frogs' legs. Two things need adjusting: the stewing time and the handling of the yolks.
- The hinge: never let the liaison boilOnce the yolks and cream go in, the sauce must stay below a simmer or the eggs will curdle into threads. Temper them with a ladle of the hot cooking liquor as directed, return the pan to very low heat, and pull it off the moment the sauce thickens enough to coat a spoon.
- Twenty minutes is far too longFrogs' legs are lean and fine-grained, closer to sole than to chicken. Modern practice gives them 6 to 10 minutes of gentle stewing depending on size; twenty leaves them stringy and shrunken away from the bone.
- "As above"The recipe refers back to the preceding entry in the book for preparing the legs; that step is not reproduced here. Frozen frogs' legs, sold in pairs at Asian and Southern markets, need only thawing, a rinse, and a thorough pat dry before they hit the butter.
- A teacupfulIn American books of this period a teacup was not a standardised measure; it is usually reckoned somewhere between about 4 and 6 fl oz, less than a full measuring cup. Use a dry-ish sherry — amontillado or fino — not a sweet cream sherry.
- Twelve saddlesA "saddle" here is the joined pair of hind legs, so twelve gives twenty-four legs: an appetizer for six or a main course for three or four.
- Flat-bottomed saucepanThe point is a single uncrowded layer so the butter browns rather than steams. A wide sauté pan does the job; cook in two batches if needed.
- Skimming the butterDo this before the yolks go in, as written. Otherwise the liaison sits on a slick of fat and the finished sauce breaks when it cools on the plate.
- The last sentenceOscar's note that "the wine and eggs are not always used" describes the plainer version: butter, shallot, cayenne, and the legs' own juices. It is faster and, with good frogs' legs, no worse.
Oscar Tschirky was never the Waldorf's chef — he was its maître d'hôtel, the front-of-house figure whose name carried the hotel's reputation — but the 1896 cookbook issued under his name is a reliable snapshot of what a grand American hotel kitchen cooked at the close of the century, which is to say French food with American ingredients. Frogs' legs, cuisses de grenouilles, were a fixture of that repertoire and something of a Gilded Age status dish in the United States: bullfrogs reached the big-city markets from the lakes and marshes of the Midwest and the South, and hotel menus listed them fried, poulette, and fricasseed. The fricassée method of cookery is a long-established construction, a stew bound at the last moment with egg yolks and cream, and the technique here is much what would be done with chicken or veal — the frogs are simply the luxury substitution. Oscar's closing remark that the wine and eggs are optional suggests a cook expected to adjust to the pantry and the hour.