Skip to main content
Main

Fowl, with Rice Croquettes

Rice balls filled with minced fowl and bechamel, coated in egg and breadcrumbs, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Fowl, with Rice Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Boil rice in broth until liquid evaporates and rice is dry.

  2. Let rice cool, then mold into balls.

Fill and coat

  1. Insert a spoon into each ball to create a hollow.

  2. Fill the hollow with minced fowl moistened with bechamel sauce.

  3. Close the opening with more rice.

  4. Dip each ball in egg.

  5. Roll in bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry until golden brown.

  2. Serve with a garnish of fried parsley.

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. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Absorbs the broth as it cooks, then forms the shaped outer shell that holds the filling.
Broth
Cooks the rice and adds savoury flavour as the liquid evaporates.
Minced fowl
Forms the savoury filling at the centre of each croquette.
Bechamel sauce
Moistens the minced fowl so the filling stays tender rather than dry.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the surface so they stick during frying.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp outer coating that browns when fried.

The step that matters

Let the rice cool before shaping. Warm rice is soft and sticky, so it tears and collapses when hollowed and filled. Once cooled, the starch sets somewhat and the rice holds its shape around the filling.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Cinnamonfits about as well

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

More rice croquettes recipes

with Jelly 5Sweet 4 See all 315 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes