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Rice Croquettes

Rice croquettes made with cooked rice, egg, cayenne pepper, lemon juice, walnuts, coated in crumbs, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Rice Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Cook rice in milk until soft and all the milk is absorbed.

  2. Let the cooked rice cool.

  3. Add the egg, cayenne pepper, lemon juice, and ground walnuts to the rice.

  4. Shape the mixture into croquettes.

Coat and fry

  1. Roll the croquettes in crumbs.

  2. Roll the croquettes in egg.

  3. Fry in hot oil 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Rice + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

  4. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the bulk of the croquette and gives a soft, tender interior once cooked in milk.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the croquettes hold their shape, and helps the coating adhere.
English walnuts
Add richness and a nutty flavor and a little body to the mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the walnuts.

The step that matters

Let the cooked rice cool before shaping. Warm rice is soft and sticky, so the mixture cannot be shaped cleanly and may fall apart or stick to the hands. Cooling firms the starch so the croquettes keep their form in the hot oil.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, egg, pepper, lemon):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Milletfits about as well
  3. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, egg, pepper, lemon. 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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