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Rice and Cheese Croquettes

A fried croquette made from boiled rice, cheese, egg, and seasonings, served with a tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Rice and Cheese Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Shape the croquettes

  1. Combine the rice, cheese, beaten egg, salt and pepper in a bowl.

  2. Heat the mixture until the egg is cooked.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a platter and allow it to cool.

  4. Divide the cooled mixture into portions and shape into croquettes.

  5. Roll the croquettes in breadcrumbs.

Fry the croquettes

  1. Fry the croquettes in hot lard until golden brown.

Make the tomato sauce and serve

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in flour, salt and pepper.

  3. Carefully pour in strained tomato and add onion juice if desired.

  4. Cook for 5 minutes and serve with the croquettes.

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

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

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled rice
Forms the bulk and body of the croquette, holding its shape once bound.
Cheese
Adds rich flavour and helps the croquette bind and hold together.
Egg
Sets when heated, binding the rice and cheese into a shapeable mixture.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the sauce and forms the base for the roux.
Flour
Cooked in butter, it thickens the strained tomato into a smooth sauce.
Strained tomato
Provides the acidity, sweetness and colour of the sauce, and its liquid.

The step that matters

Let the heated mixture cool fully before shaping. Heating sets the egg, but a warm, soft mixture is too sticky to shape. Cooling firms the starch and binders so the croquettes keep their form in the hot lard.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, cheese, egg, pepper, tomato, butter, flour):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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