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Dessert

Rice Fritters

Rice fritters are balls of cooked rice mixed with raisins, currants, and citron, fried in lard and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Rice Fritters

Why it works: Raisin and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Rice Fritters

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Shape the fritters

  1. Add stoned raisins, currants, and citron to the cooked rice and mix thoroughly.

  2. Once the rice is cold, roll it into walnut-sized balls.

  3. Dip the rice balls in frying batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the balls in hot lard until golden brown, then drain them.

  2. Dust the fritters with powdered sugar and serve on a napkin.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

  1. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  2. Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cooked rice
Forms the bulk of each fritter and holds its shape when rolled into balls.
Stoned raisins
Add sweetness and chewy moisture inside the rice.
Currants
Add sweetness and small pockets of chewy fruit throughout the rice.
Frying batter
Forms a coating that turns crisp and golden when fried.
Hot lard for frying
Conducts heat to brown the batter and cook the fritters through.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy. If it is too hot, the outside browns before the rice heats through. Steady heat gives a crisp, evenly cooked fritter.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, raisin, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, raisin, sugar. 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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