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Rice Croquettes

Rice croquettes are fried rice cakes made with rice, milk, sugar, eggs, lemon peel, butter, salt, and coated in cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Rice Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Soak the rice in warm water for 3 hours, enough to cover it.

  2. Drain the rice and pour in the milk.

  3. Stew in a saucepan set in another of hot water until the rice is very tender.

Make the filling

  1. Add the sugar, butter, and salt, and simmer for 10 minutes.

  2. Whisk the eggs until frothy, then add them cautiously while removing the saucepan from the heat.

  3. Return the saucepan to the stove and stir while thickening, avoiding boiling.

  4. Remove from heat and add the lemon peel, then turn out onto a greased dish to cool.

Shape, coat and fry

  1. Once cold and stiff, shape the mixture with floured hands.

  2. Dip each piece in beaten egg, then coat with cracker crumbs.

  3. Fry in hot lard 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and thicken it as they set gently with heat.
Rice
Forms the starchy body of the croquettes, softening and thickening in the milk.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to create a creamy base that sets when cooled.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a tender texture.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs off the heat. Eggs can scramble if added to a hot mixture, so they are whisked in while the pan is removed from the heat. Returning to gentle heat then thickens the custard without boiling, which would curdle the eggs.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, sugar, egg, butter, flour):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, sugar, egg, butter, flour. 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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