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 Frogs have very rarely played any part in English cooking. With one or two historical exceptions...  See also: Frogs...  Original Receipt in 'The Accomplisht Cook' by Robert May, 1660 (Robert May 1660);To bake Frogs. Being flayed, take the hind legs, cut off the feet, and season them with nutmeg, pepper, and salt, put them in a pye with some sweet herbs chopped small, large mace, slic't lemon, gooseberries, grapes, or Barberries, pieces of skirrets, artichocks, potatoes, or parsnips, and marrow; close it up and bake it; being baked, liquor it with butter, and juyce of orange, or grape-verjuyce. May was clearly something of a frog enthusiast, for in his "Triumphs and Trophies in Cookery, to be used at Festival Times, as Twelfth-day, &c;" he outlines a grand dinner in which a flour-paste ship fires real cannons, a model castle explodes and an edible stag bleeds Claret "being done with admiration to the beholders" and after "the Ladies take egg-shells full of sweet waters and throw them at each other" he then presents two blind-baked pies "where lifting first the lid off one pye, out skip some Frogs, which make the Ladies to skip and shreek; next after the other pye, whence come out the Birds, who by a natural instinct flying in the light, will put out the Candles; so that what with the flying Birds and skipping Frogs, the one above, the other beneath, will cause much delight and pleasure to the whole company." Such things, he regrets, were "formerly the delight of the Nobility, before good House-keeping had left England". See: Frog Fricassee  |
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