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Rice Croquettes

Rice croquettes are fried balls made from steamed rice, milk, sugar, eggs, butter, and lemon peel.

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

Make the rice base

  1. Soak the rice in warm water to cover, then drain almost dry.

  2. Combine the rice and milk in a pot and steam until very tender.

  3. Stir in the sugar, melted butter, and salt.

  4. Beat the eggs until stiff, then fold them into the mixture and cook for 5 minutes.

  5. Remove from heat, add grated lemon peel, and transfer to a well-buttered dish.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cooled, flour your hands and shape the mixture into oval balls.

  2. Dip each ball into beaten eggs, 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

Rice
Softens into a thick base that holds the croquettes together when shaped.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to add moisture and a creamy, custard-like texture.
Eggs
Set during cooking to bind the mixture and form a coating for the crumbs.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the exterior brown when fried.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer crust when fried in hot fat.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs until stiff, then fold them into the mixture and cook for 5 minutes.. Stiff beaten eggs add air and set as they cook, so the mixture firms up. Under-cooking leaves it too soft to shape, and over-stirring deflates the foam.

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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