Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Croquettes of Rice
Ingredients
Directions
Make the rice base
Put the rice into boiling milk and let it simmer until tender.
Add butter, lemon-rind sugar, and egg yolks. Stir well.
Let thicken without boiling.
Shape and fry
Once cool, roll the mixture into small bolster shapes.
Dip each bolster into well-beaten egg.
Fry in a wire basket in a stewpan until light brown.
Drain the fried croquettes.
Finish and serve
Sift white sugar over them.
Serve on a napkin.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Rice + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,374 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,366 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
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Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together9,645 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Rice
- Forms the bulk of the croquette and, cooked in milk, gives a soft, starchy body.
- Egg yolks
- Enrich the mixture and help it thicken into a set, tender filling.
- Milk
- Cooks the rice until tender and adds moisture and richness to the filling.
- Butter
- Adds fat for a richer flavour and softer texture in the filling.
- Well-beaten egg
- Coats each shape so it forms a sealed crust that browns when fried.
The step that matters
Let thicken without boiling. Egg yolks scramble and curdle if they get too hot, so the mixture must thicken gently. Boiling would leave it grainy and make the bolsters hard to shape.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, butter, sugar, egg):
- Vanillafits better
- Coconutfits better
- Figfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, butter, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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