Skip to main content
Main

Veal and Rice Cakes

A savory dish of veal and rice formed into cakes, coated with breadcrumbs, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Veal and Rice Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine cold boiled rice, minced veal, and minced bacon.

  2. Pound the mixture with salt, pepper, lemon peel, nutmeg, thyme, and parsley.

  3. Add the egg yolk and mix well.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into small cakes or balls.

  2. Coat each cake with egg white and then with crushed vermicelli or breadcrumbs.

  3. Fry the cakes in hot oil until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with a piquant brown sauce or gravy made from veal bones flavored with mushroom ketchup.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled rice
Forms the bulk of the cakes and keeps them light and tender inside.
Minced veal
Provides the main meaty body and savory flavor of the cakes.
Minced bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that keeps the cakes moist while frying.
Egg yolk
Binds the mixture so the cakes hold their shape.
Egg white
Gives the crumb coating a surface that sticks and crisps when fried.
Crushed vermicelli or breadcrumbs
Creates a crisp, golden-brown outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Frying the coated cakes in hot oil. If the oil is not hot enough, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy before it browns, and the cakes can fall apart. Hot oil quickly sets the egg white and crumbs into a crisp crust that holds the cake together.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, veal, pepper, lemon, thyme, parsley, egg):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, veal, pepper, lemon, thyme, parsley, 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipes