Skip to main content
Main

Rice Croquettes

Rice croquettes are fried balls made from cooked rice, milk, egg, sugar, butter, salt, nutmeg, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Make the mixture

  1. Combine milk, rice, and seasonings in a dish.

  2. Bring mixture to a boil, then add the well-beaten egg.

  3. Stir for one minute, then remove from heat and let cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cool, shape mixture into croquettes.

  2. Roll each croquette in egg and breadcrumbs.

  3. Drop into boiling lard 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. 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 + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

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

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Cooked rice
Forms the bulk of the croquette and gives it a soft, starchy body.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to make a moist, thick mixture that holds its shape.
Egg
Sets when heated, binding the mixture so the croquettes hold together.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the outside brown during frying.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and a softer texture.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. A warm, soft mixture is sticky and falls apart. Cooling lets the starch and egg firm up so the croquettes keep their shape and hold together in the hot fat.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Turmericfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

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

You might also like