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Frogs' Legs, Saute Meuniere
Clip off with scissors the claws of one and a half pounds fresh frogs' legs, thoroughly wipe them, place on a plate, season with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper, lightly baste with milk, then roll in flour and briskly shake them on a sieve to remove all superfluous flour. Thoroughly heat two tablespoons melted butter in a frying pan, add the legs and brown for fifteen minutes, gently tossing meanwhile. Dress on a dish, sprinkle over half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley and the juice of half a lemon. Place half ounce butter in pan, toss on fire until a light brown, pour over the legs and serve.
A plain meunière treatment that stands or falls on dryness and timing. The one number to ignore is the fifteen minutes.
- Cook them far less than fifteen minutesFrogs' legs are lean and thin; small pairs are done in four to six minutes total, larger ones in eight. Fifteen minutes of tossing in butter dries the meat to cotton and blackens the flour.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons is half a teaspoon of white pepper. That is assertive but correct for this dish.
- "Baste with milk"This means moisten, not spoon over during cooking — dip or brush the legs in milk so the flour has something to grip. Do it just before flouring, or the coating turns to paste.
- Dry them firstFrogs' legs sold now are mostly frozen and imported from Asia, farmed or wild-caught. Thaw fully, then press between towels until the surface is dry; residual water will steam rather than brown and the flour will slough off in the pan.
- Shaking off the flourThe sieve step matters more than it looks. Loose flour burns in the butter within a minute and turns the finishing sauce bitter instead of nutty.
- The finishing butterHalf an ounce is one tablespoon. Cooked to a light brown it is beurre noisette; take it off the heat while it is hazelnut-coloured, since it darkens further in the hot pan.
- Butter alone will scorchTwo tablespoons of butter over the heat needed to brown will pass its smoke point. Clarified butter, or butter with a spoonful of neutral oil, holds up better.
- YieldA pound and a half of legs is two generous main servings or four appetiser portions.
Meunière — conventionally glossed as "in the miller's wife's manner" — is the French shorthand for anything floured and fried in butter, then finished with lemon, parsley and more butter; sole is its most famous subject, and frogs' legs are often said to be among its most characteristic. Frogs have been eaten in France since at least the medieval period, and the Lyonnais and Dombes marshes east of the city were long the centre of the trade; nineteenth-century menus often list grenouilles among the regional specialities. The dish reached American hotel dining rooms through French-trained chefs, and its presence in a book called The International Cook Book reflects exactly that: a Continental standard offered to readers as evidence of a wider world. Wild frogs were still commonly netted and sold in the United States when this was written; today virtually all legs on the market are farmed and frozen.