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Rice Croquettes

Rice croquettes are fried balls made from cooked rice, milk, water, egg, sugar, lemon, butter, and coated with cracker crumbs.

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

Make the rice mixture

  1. Boil the rice in milk and water for about an hour until dry.

  2. Remove from heat and place in a bowl.

  3. Add the egg, sugar, lemon juice, lemon rind, and butter to the rice.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into croquettes and roll them in cracker crumbs.

  2. Heat lard in a pan until very hot and fry the croquettes 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 + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  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

Rice
Starch that thickens as it cooks in milk and water, giving the croquettes body.
Milk
Adds richness and softness, helping the rice cook into a creamy mass.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the croquettes hold their shape.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the exterior brown during frying.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic oils that brighten the flavor of the rice.

The step that matters

Cooking the rice until dry. The rice must absorb the liquid and become thick enough to hold its shape. If it stays wet, the croquettes will be soft and may fall apart when shaped and fried.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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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