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Rice Croquettes

Rice croquettes are small fried balls of rice mixed with cheese, spices, and minced meat, coated in crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,062 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Rice Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the rice until soft and dry.

  2. Mix the cheese, mace, and enough butter to moisten.

  3. Add the minced chicken or turkey, oysters, parsley, nutmeg, and lemon rind. Mix well, moistening with cream.

Shape and coat

  1. Take a portion of rice the size of an egg, flatten it, and place a tablespoon of the mixture in the center. Enclose the rice around it.

  2. Shape into an egg, brush with beaten egg yolk, and roll in pounded crackers.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry two croquettes at a time in boiling lard until brown. Remove with a skimmer.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

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

  5. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the soft, dry outer shell that encloses the filling.
Cheese
Adds savoury richness and flavour to the filling.
Chicken or turkey
Provides the meaty body of the filling.
Oysters
Adds a briny, savoury flavour to the filling.
Egg yolk
Brushed on the outside to help the coating brown when fried.
Cream
Moistens the filling so it holds together and stays tender.

The step that matters

Enclosing the filling in the rice. The rice must be fully sealed around the filling. Any gap lets the filling leak into the boiling lard and can make the croquette break apart while frying.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, cheese, butter, meat, oyster, parsley, nutmeg):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, cheese, butter, meat, oyster, parsley, nutmeg. 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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