No. 1021

Frogs' Legs Fried a la Orly

Cuisses de Grenouilles Frites a la Orly

Divide medium-sized frogs legs by cutting them apart at each joint; put them into a vessel with minced onions, branches of parsley, salt, pepper, nutmeg, lemon juice and sweet oil; let them marinate for two hours, then roll them in flour and fry till a good color; drain, and besprinkle with salt; dress them on folded napkins with fried parsley on top. Serve in a separate sauce-boat a tomato sauce (No. 549).

← No. 1020 Frogs' Legs Deviled Frogs No. 1022 Frogs' Legs Fried with Cream Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

A straightforward marinate-flour-fry dish from Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894). The only real work is the two-hour marinade and getting the fat hot enough that the flour crusts rather than soaks.

The hinge: dry the legs before flouringThey come out of an oil-and-lemon marinade soaking wet, and wet legs plus flour makes paste. Lift them out, blot them well, then flour and shake off the excess just before they go into the fat.
Sweet oilNineteenth-century American usage for edible olive oil, as against lamp or machine oil. Any mild olive oil does the job here.
Frying medium and temperatureThe recipe says only "fry till a good color"; Orly preparations are normally deep-fried, in lard or clarified fat, and around 350-375F suits them. The pieces are small and cook in two to three minutes, and much longer than that dries the meat to cotton.
Cutting them apartA pair of legs joined at the saddle separates into two thighs and two drumstick sections. Farmed legs today are often larger than the "medium-sized" frogs called for, so allow a little more pan time.
Fried parsleyWhole dry sprigs dropped into the same hot fat for a few seconds until they stop sputtering, then drained and salted. They must be bone dry or they will spit violently.
"Dress them on folded napkins"A standard period presentation for fried dishes: a folded linen napkin on the platter to absorb drips. A rack or paper does the same work if you would rather not sacrifice linen.
The sauceNo. 549 is Ranhofer's tomato sauce. Any good plain tomato sauce, thin enough to pour from a boat, sits in for it.
YieldFigure about 1 lb of legs for two as a first course, 2 lb for four. Serve immediately; the crust softens within minutes.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, for many years chef at Delmonico's in New York, gives frogs' legs a full section in The Epicurean — deviled, fried with cream sauce, and this Orly — which tells you how firmly they sat in the French repertoire that fashionable American restaurants imported wholesale. Frogs were also a genuine local product: a commercial trade in bullfrogs persisted in the United States well into the twentieth century. "À la Orly" is one of the old classical formulas for anything marinated, floured or battered, deep-fried and sent out with tomato sauce, applied most often to sole and whiting; its name is generally traced to a person or place otherwise unrecorded, and no convincing origin has ever been documented. The marinade of onion, parsley, lemon and oil is the standard French marinade instantanée, meant less to tenderize than to season meat that is famously bland.