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Rice Dumplings

Rice dumplings made with boiled rice, almonds, butter, sugar, eggs, and coated in cracker crumbs, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,456 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Rice Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice and almonds

  1. Wash and scald the rice, then boil it in a pot with milk and enough water until tender, adding salt to taste.

  2. Spread the rice on dishes to cool.

  3. Blanch the sweet and bitter almonds.

  4. Pound the blanched almonds to a paste in a mortar.

Make the dough

  1. Grate the lemon peel into the butter.

  2. Cream the butter with powdered sugar.

  3. Add the egg yolks one at a time.

  4. Gradually mix in the boiled rice.

  5. Gradually mix in the grated stale bread.

  6. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into flat dumplings.

  2. Coat each dumpling in cracker crumbs.

  3. Dip the coated dumplings in beaten egg.

  4. Fry the dumplings in hot butter until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve the dumplings with fruit or wine sauce.

  2. If serving with meat, boil the rice in water and fry in fat.

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. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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 dumpling and gives it a soft, tender body.
Almonds
Contribute nutty aroma and a rich, paste-like texture to the dough.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the dough and browns the dumplings when fried.
Egg yolks
Enrich the dough and help bind it together.
Egg whites
Folded in whipped to lighten the mixture and add structure as it sets.
Stale bread
Absorbs moisture and helps bind the rice into a shapeable dough.

The step that matters

Frying the dumplings in hot butter. The fat must be hot enough to set the egg and crumb coating quickly and brown it. If the butter is too cool, the coating soaks up fat, turns greasy, and the dumpling can fall apart.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pecansfits about as well
  3. Peanutfits about as well
  4. Cocoafits less well

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

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