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Rice Croquettes

Rice croquettes are fried balls made from cooked rice, milk, egg, sugar, butter, salt, nutmeg, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Rice Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice mixture

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add the cooked rice, salt, and nutmeg to the boiling milk.

  3. Once it boils again, stir in the beaten egg and cook for 1 minute.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool.

Shape and coat

  1. Once cool, shape the mixture into croquettes.

  2. Roll each croquette in egg and then in breadcrumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry in hot oil until golden 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.

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. Milk + buttertop 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 + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

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

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 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

Cooked rice
Provides the bulk and starch that thickens with milk so the mixture can be shaped.
Milk
Supplies moisture and softens the rice into a creamy mixture.
Egg
Binds the mixture and sets when cooked, holding the croquettes together.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the outside brown during frying.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. As the starch in the rice cools, the mixture firms up and holds its shape. Shaping it while still hot makes it soft and sticky, and the croquettes may fall apart.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Turmericfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

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