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Alabama Rice Fritters

Alabama Rice Fritters are fried rice batter with a cinnamon‑sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 serve

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

  2. For the sauce, boil sugar, water, and cinnamon stick until clear.

  3. 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

Boiled rice
Gives the batter body and a soft, starchy interior once fried.
Eggs
Bind the batter together and help the fritters set as they cook.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the fritters puff and rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup that the fritters are served with.
Lard
Fat that fries the outside quickly, browning and crisping the surface.

The step that matters

Drop the batter into boiling lard. Hot fat sets the outside of each fritter quickly, so it browns and crisps instead of soaking up grease. If the lard is not hot enough, the fritters turn heavy, greasy and pale inside before the outside is golden.

“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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