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Rice Croquettes

Rice croquettes are fried rice cakes mixed with cheese and mace, coated in crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Rice Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Boil the rice until soft and dry.

  2. Mix in the grated cheese, powdered mace, and enough butter to moisten.

Shape and coat

  1. Take a portion the size of a hen’s egg and shape it into a pear or egg form.

  2. Roll the shaped croquettes in cracker or bread crumbs.

Fry

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

  2. For a variation, substitute cheese with 2 egg yolks and a little more butter, shaping into flat cakes.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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 croquette, setting into a soft, tender interior when cooked.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness so the rice mixture holds together without drying out.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor and fat, helping bind the mixture and enrich its taste.
Cracker or bread crumbs
Creates a crisp, golden outer crust during frying.
Egg yolks
Acts as a binder and enriches the mixture in the optional variation.

The step that matters

Boil the rice until soft and dry. Rice that is too wet makes shaped croquettes slump and crack in the hot fat, while rice cooked just until tender holds its shape and gives a firm base for binding.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, cheese, butter, bread, egg. 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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