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Alabama Rice Fritters

Rice fritters made from boiled rice, eggs, and baking powder, fried in lard and served with a cinnamon-sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Alabama Rice Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine boiled rice, eggs, and baking powder to make a batter.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into boiling lard and fry until golden.

  2. For the sauce, combine sugar, water, and cinnamon in a saucepan.

  3. Boil the sauce until it becomes clear.

Serve

  1. Serve the fritters with the sauce.

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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

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

  5. Rice + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help the fritters set structure as they fry.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the fritters puff and turn light.
Boiled rice
Forms the bulk of the batter, giving the fritters their body and texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps it thicken as it boils.

The step that matters

Fry until golden in boiling lard. The fat must be hot enough to brown the outside quickly. If the lard is too cool, the batter absorbs more fat and turns greasy before it sets and browns.

“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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