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Rice Cutlets

Rice cutlets made from boiled rice, minced meat, onion, ginger, chilies, egg, breadcrumbs, and ghee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Rice Cutlets

Why it works: Ginger and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,800 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Rice Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice and meat

  1. Boil the rice and drain off the water.

  2. Mash or grind the rice on a clean surface and set aside.

  3. Grind the cold minced meat into a fine paste and set aside.

Make the filling

  1. Warm the ghee in a pan and brown the onion.

  2. Add the ground meat, pepper, salt, green chillies, and minced ginger; mix well.

  3. Add the ground rice and mix until nicely browned, then set aside to cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into cutlets.

  2. Dip each cutlet in the beaten egg and sprinkle with breadcrumbs.

  3. Fry the cutlets in ghee until light 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  4. Rice + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,196 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 cutlet and gives it a soft, starchy body once mashed.
Cold minced meat
Provides protein and savoury flavour, binding the filling into a shapeable mixture.
Egg
Coats the cutlets so the breadcrumbs stick and help them brown when fried.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust during frying.
Onion
Browned in ghee to add sweetness and a deep savoury base to the filling.
Ghee
Adds rich fat that carries flavour and helps the outside of the cutlets brown.

The step that matters

Fry the cutlets in ghee until light brown. Frying over moderate heat lets the breadcrumb and egg coating set and brown evenly before the filling heats through. Too high a heat burns the crust while the centre stays cold.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, meat, ghee, ginger, egg, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, meat, ghee, ginger, egg, pepper. 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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