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Rice Balls

Rice balls made with boiled rice, minced meat, gravy, egg, breadcrumbs, and seasonings, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,379 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Rice Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the rice for twenty minutes.

  2. Stir in the egg, season with pepper and salt, and allow it to cook.

Shape and coat

  1. Form the rice into balls with the minced meat mixture in the center.

  2. Roll the balls in egg white and then in bread crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry in hot fat for two minutes.

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 + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  2. Rice + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Rice + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,481 recipes

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 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

Boiled rice
Forms the bulk of each ball and gives it a soft, starchy body.
Minced meat
Adds savoury flavour and firms up as it cooks inside the ball.
Egg
Binds the rice mixture together and helps the crumbs stick to the outside.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer coating when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in hot fat. Hot fat browns the crumb coating quickly, so it crisps instead of soaking up grease. The minced meat in the centre must also be cooked through, so check the middle before serving.

“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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