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Frogs' Legs with Parmesan Cheese
Cut off claws from a pound and a half fresh frogs' legs, place in a stone jar with a sliced onion, a sprig thyme, two crushed bay leaves, two branches parsley, half gill white wine, half gill vinegar, two tablespoons good oil, light teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper; mix well, and let marinade one hour. Drain, lightly roll in flour, dip in beaten egg, and lastly roll in grated Parmesan cheese. Place in a frying basket and fry in boiling fat eight minutes. Lift up, drain well, sprinkle with a little salt, shake well, dress on dish with a folded napkin and serve with a tartare sauce separately.
A straightforward marinate-crumb-fry sequence; the only real problem is the frying time, which belongs to an era of much cooler fat.
- Fry timeEight minutes will dry frogs' legs to threads. Small pairs need about 3 minutes in fat at 350-375F, larger ones 4 to 5; pull them when the cheese crust is deep gold. The meat is done as soon as it parts from the thin bone.
- "Boiling fat"Fat does not boil at frying heat; the phrase means fat hot enough to bubble vigorously when food enters, roughly 350-375F. Fat much cooler than that and the egg-and-cheese coating will absorb grease; much hotter and the Parmesan scorches before the meat heats through.
- A gillA gill is half a cup (4 fl oz), so half a gill is 1/4 cup. The marinade is thus 1/4 cup white wine and 1/4 cup vinegar to 2 tablespoons oil — sharp by design, and the recipe's one hour is not a period to extend.
- "Cut off claws"This means trimming the webbed feet from the end of each leg, not removing a claw. Most frogs' legs sold today come already trimmed and skinned, joined in pairs at the pelvis.
- SourcingFresh is unlikely; buy frozen farmed legs (usually imported bullfrog or, in the US, Southern varieties) and thaw them fully in the refrigerator, then pat very dry or the flour will slide off. Wild-caught frogs are regulated by season and species in many states.
- The stone jarAny non-reactive bowl works — glass, glazed ceramic or stainless. Glazed stoneware does not react with vinegar; do not use bare aluminum or cast iron.
- CoatingGrated Parmesan browns much faster than breadcrumbs and needs a well-drained rather than dripping surface to cling to; press it on firmly after the egg, then rest the coated legs on a rack for 10 minutes before frying so the crust sets.
- Yield and serviceA pound and a half of legs serves three as a first course, two as a main. The folded napkin is a period presentation device for absorbing fat; a rack or paper does the same. Tartar sauce is served cold, alongside.
Frogs' legs arrived in American cookbooks largely as a French borrowing, and this recipe's structure — a short vinegar-and-herb marinade, a flour-egg-crumb coating, deep fat, tartar sauce apart — is textbook late nineteenth-century restaurant practice, the kind of thing a hotel garde-manger would turn out by the dozen. Filippini's International Cook Book gathers such dishes under a global banner, but the technique here is Parisian rather than exotic; the substitution of grated Parmesan for breadcrumbs gives a savory, quickly browning crust. Frogs were a genuine commercial catch in the era, supplied to city markets before farmed and imported legs took over the trade in the twentieth century. The folded napkin on the serving dish, now vanished, was a common presentation for fried food: it soaked up fat at the table.