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Frogs' Legs, Finnoise
Cut off the feet up to the first joint from one and a half pounds fresh frogs' legs. Heat a tablespoon butter in a frying pan, add one finely chopped seedless green pepper, lightly brown three minutes and add the legs. Season with a level teaspoon salt, a saltspoon cayenne, a saltspoon grated nutmeg, and fry eight minutes, lightly tossing meanwhile. Pour in a half gill white wine and let reduce five minutes; add two gills tomato sauce, half a teaspoon freshly chopped parsley and mix well; cook ten minutes; gradually add half an ounce good butter in little bits, continually mixing while adding it, pour in a deep dish and serve.
A short, hot saute finished with butter, written in the hotel shorthand of the period. The measurements are all pre-standardization, and the total cooking time is the one thing worth reconsidering.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so a half gill of white wine is 1/4 cup and two gills of tomato sauce is 1 cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so the cayenne and nutmeg are 1/4 teaspoon each -- the cayenne at that level is assertive.
- The timing is the hingeEight minutes of frying plus ten in sauce is close to twenty minutes for meat that is done in five or six. Frog legs are lean and fine-grained and go stringy and dry past that point; brown them briefly, then let them finish in the sauce for a few minutes only.
- Buying the legsFresh frog legs are rare outside specialty markets; frozen farmed legs, largely from Southeast Asia, are the norm and are perfectly good. Thaw fully and pat very dry, or they will steam rather than brown. Packaged legs are usually sold already trimmed, in which case the instruction about cutting off the feet no longer applies.
- "Seedless green pepper"A green bell pepper with the seeds and ribs removed, finely chopped -- not a chile. Three minutes will soften it but not brown it in any real sense.
- Tomato sauceIn 1906 this means a cooked, seasoned tomato sauce from the day's mise en place, not ketchup and not plain canned puree. A cup of a simple tomato sauce, or passata simmered with a little onion and butter, is the right substitute.
- Mounting the butterThe half ounce of butter added in bits at the end is monter au beurre. Pull the pan off direct heat and swirl the cold butter in a piece at a time; if the sauce boils it will break and turn greasy.
- YieldA pound and a half of legs is two generous servings or three modest ones as a first course. Serve in a warmed deep dish with bread for the sauce.
The International Cook Book was compiled by Alexander Filippini, for many years associated with Delmonico's in New York, and its sweep -- recipes drawn from every cuisine he could name -- reflects the ambitions of American hotel cooking around 1900. Frogs' legs were a familiar item in that world rather than a novelty: quick to cook, and French enough in association to justify a place on an expensive menu. The suffix finnoise follows the French kitchen convention of naming a preparation after a place, though in practice these garnish names circulated loosely between hotel kitchens and were often attached to dishes with no real connection to the country invoked; the tomato, pepper and cayenne here read more like the late-nineteenth-century restaurant idiom than anything Finnish. What the recipe does document reliably is the technique -- brown, deglaze with wine, add sauce, finish with cold butter -- which was the standard sequence for a small saute.