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Rice Balls

Rice balls are fried balls of cooked rice mixed with egg and salt, served hot with maple syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,265 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Rice Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine cooked rice, salt, and beaten egg.

  2. Dust your hands with flour and form the mixture into round balls.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard or beef drippings in a pan.

  2. Fry the rice balls until golden brown.

  3. Serve hot with maple syrup.

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 + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + maple syruptop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Egg + maple syruptop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Cooked rice
Forms the bulk of the balls and gives them their body.
Egg
Binds the rice so the balls hold their shape when formed and fried.
Lard or beef drippings
Conducts heat for frying and adds fat that browns the outside.

The step that matters

Form the balls with floured hands. Flour on the hands keeps the sticky rice mixture from clinging to them, so the balls form cleanly. Fat added to a hot pan then browns the outside while the egg sets the interior.

“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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