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Rice Croquettes

Rice croquettes are fried balls or strips made from boiled rice, eggs, sugar, lemon or vanilla, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Rice Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Soak the rice overnight.

  2. The next morning, boil the rice and add the eggs.

  3. Sweeten to taste and flavor with lemon or vanilla.

Shape and coat

  1. Once cooled, mix in the flour to help the mixture hold together.

  2. Shape the mixture into balls or strips.

  3. Dip each piece in beaten egg, then coat with flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in hot oil or drippings until golden brown.

  2. Serve on napkins.

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

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

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Rice
Forms the bulk of the croquettes and provides the starchy body that holds their shape.
Eggs
Bind the cooked rice together and help set the mixture as it cools.
All-purpose flour
Absorbs moisture in the cooled mixture so it holds together when shaped.
Beaten egg
Creates a sticky layer that lets the flour coating adhere before frying.

The step that matters

Mix in the flour once the rice has cooled. Adding flour to hot rice can make the mixture gluey and sticky. Cooling first lets the flour bind the mixture so the pieces hold their shape when fried.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, egg, sugar, 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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