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Mce Croquettes, with Vanilla Cream Sauce

Rice croquettes served with a vanilla cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Mce Croquettes, with Vanilla Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. Boil the rice in 1 quart of boiling water with 1 tablespoon salt until tender; drain.

  2. Combine the rice with ½ pint milk, lemon rind or cinnamon, and 4 tablespoons sugar; boil for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  3. Remove from heat, stir in egg yolks one at a time, and return to heat for 2 minutes to set the eggs.

  4. Spread the rice on an oiled platter, let cool, then cut into strips and shape into corks.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each piece in cracker dust, beaten egg, and then cracker dust again.

  2. Fry in hot fat until golden brown; drain on a napkin and dust with powdered sugar.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, melt 1 oz butter and 1 oz flour over heat until bubbling; add ½ pint boiling milk, 1 oz sugar, and 1 teaspoon vanilla essence.

  2. Serve the croquettes with the cream sauce.

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 + milktop 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. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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
Forms the bulk of the croquettes and, once cooked and cooled, holds its shape when cut.
Egg yolks
Enrich the rice and set on heating, binding the mixture so it holds together.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to give it a soft, creamy moisture.
Sugar
Sweetens the rice mixture and the sauce.
Butter
Fat in the sauce roux that adds richness and smooth texture.
Flour
Thickens the butter in the sauce roux so the sauce becomes creamy.

The step that matters

Setting the egg yolks. Stirring in yolks off the heat and then returning the pan to heat sets the eggs into the rice. If the mixture is overheated, the yolks can scramble and become grainy, so keep the heat gentle.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, sugar, milk, flour, egg, sauce. 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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