Skip to main content
Main

Rice Cakes

Rice cakes made with boiled rice, cheese, parsley, breadcrumbs, tomato sauce, eggs, and seasonings, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Rice Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice mixture

  1. Boil the rice in stock until it absorbs as much liquid as possible.

  2. Add the cheese, parsley, breadcrumbs, tomato sauce, pepper, and salt.

  3. Bind the mixture with the egg yolks and mix thoroughly.

Shape and fry

  1. Form into cakes and brush with the egg white.

  2. Roll in breadcrumbs and fry until golden brown.

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.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Parsley + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 cakes and absorbs the stock, giving them body.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture so the cakes hold their shape.
Egg white
Brushed on the cakes to help the breadcrumb coating adhere and brown.
Breadcrumbs
Add texture and a crisp, golden coating when fried.
Cheese
Adds savoury flavour and richness to the mixture.

The step that matters

Boil the rice in stock until it absorbs as much liquid as possible. Rice that still holds free liquid makes a wet mixture that will not bind or hold its shape when formed and fried. Cooking it until the liquid is absorbed gives a firmer base for the egg yolks to bind.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, cheese, tomato, sauce, pepper, egg):

  1. Corianderfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Celeryfits about as well
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, cheese, tomato, sauce, pepper, 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.

More rice cakes recipes

Boston 3Fried 3 See all 144 →

You might also like

Rice and Cheese CasseroleRice and Cheese Casserole23 recipesCheese RiceCheese Rice12 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes