No. 1023

Frogs' Legs Royer

Cuisses de Grenouilles a la Royer

Fry in two ounces of butter, one pound of trimmed frogs' legs with a teaspoonful of chopped onions added; when done, cover them with an espagnole sauce (No. 414) and half as much tomato sauce (No. 549); reduce and season to taste. Broil some slices of bacon, cut them up into squares; dress the frogs' legs, dredge over with chopped parsley and surround with the pieces of bacon to form a border.

LOBSTER (Homard).

A large sea crawfish, the cuirass being strewn with blue spots more or less big on a reddish foundation which covers a white tissue. This crustacean is not very fleshy, feeds but little and is very difficult to digest; when cooked it turns red. Its claws and tails are the only meaty parts and are excellent for food.

Spiny Lobster (Langouste), Palinurus Locusta.—The spiny lobster has two large horns in front of its eyes, two others underneath and it is with these it catches and draws toward it the fish on which it feeds. Its back is covered with prickles and very rough. During the winter this crustacean lives in the deep ocean and is very common in the Mediterranean sea. Its meat can only be digested by robust stomachs and it always requires to be highly seasoned.

← No. 1022 Frogs' Legs Fried with Cream Sauce Frogs No. 1024 Lobster or Spiny Lobster, American Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a stockpot always going, so the two mother-sauce cross-references do most of the work here. Once you have the sauce sorted, the dish is fifteen minutes' work.

The saucesEspagnole (No. 414) is a brown veal stock thickened with a dark roux and flavoured with mirepoix, then long-simmered; No. 549 is Ranhofer's tomato sauce, not reproduced here. A good demi-glace plus a smooth, well-reduced tomato sauce in the 2:1 ratio the recipe specifies gives the same effect; a cup or so of the mixture will coat a pound of legs, though the recipe gives no quantity.
Do not overcook the legsFrogs' legs are lean and set almost instantly. Small pairs need two to three minutes a side in the butter and no more, or they turn stringy and pull away from the bone. Finish them in the sauce only long enough to coat, and reduce the sauce separately if it needs tightening.
Trimmed legs"Trimmed" means the feet cut off and the skin removed, which is how frozen legs are sold now. A pound is roughly a dozen pairs of the small kind, though grades vary a good deal. Thaw fully and dry them hard before they go in the butter or they will steam.
The onionA teaspoonful of chopped onion in two ounces of butter is a seasoning, not a base. Add it partway through so it softens without browning; scorched onion in the pan will carry through into the finished sauce.
The bacon borderBroiled bacon cut into squares and ranged around the edge of the platter is a nineteenth-century garnish convention. Use thick-cut, broil it until firm rather than brittle, and cut it after cooking so the squares hold their shape.
YieldA pound of legs with sauce and bacon will serve two as a main course or four as a first course. The recipe itself gives no portion count.
The lobster textThe paragraphs on lobster and spiny lobster below the recipe are the opening of the following section, caught by the page scan. They are Ranhofer's descriptive notes, not part of this dish.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for more than thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire set down in print. Frogs' legs were a Delmonico signature: the house is generally credited with putting them on American menus in a serious way at a time when they were still regarded as a French affectation, and Ranhofer gives them a run of numbered preparations here. The "Royer" of the title is one of the many personal dedications scattered through the book, a habit of the period in which a dish was named for a patron, a colleague or a visiting dignitary; who Royer was is not recorded in the text. The construction is pure haute-cuisine shorthand of its day: take a delicate white flesh, nap it in espagnole sharpened with tomato, and frame it on the platter with a garnish that supplies salt and colour.