Were the English the first to eat frog legs?
British archaeologists discovered during excavations that their ancestors ate the legs of frogs, and this more than 8000 years before the French, traditionally considered as precursors in the matter.
It's a Trafalgar coup for French gastronomy!
These experts of the Mesolithic period are based on excavations carried out last April around the famous megalithic site of Stonehenge where they found, alongside fish bones and remains of auroch - the ancestor of cattle - bones legs of frogs dating from 7596 to 6250 BCE.
“They really had rich food resources, they ate anything that moved. But we weren't expecting frogs' legs,” commented David Jacques, one of the researchers from the University of Buckingham.
This one tries to explain the phenomenon: “Frog legs are full of protein and very quick to cook, it was a bit like fast food in the Mesolithic era.”
According to the researcher, this discovery of bones dating back more than 8000 years would be a world record, likely to ridicule France where frogs' legs only appeared on the menu card in the 12th century.
"It surprises me a little because the English are always quick to make fun of us on this" reacts Martine Guigues of the Confrérie des Tastes-Tuisses de Grenouilles.
A quarrel between the two oldest enemies in the world that Alexandre Dumas already revealed in his Grand Dictionnaire de cuisine: “In Italy and Germany we consume a lot of these batrachians and the markets are covered with them, and the English who hate them and who, for that reason no doubt, made caricatures about sixty years ago representing French people eating frogs...»
