Skip to main content
Main

Rice Balls

Rice balls made from cold boiled rice, egg, flour, salt, and cayenne pepper, dropped into soup before serving.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,379 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Rice Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mash the cold boiled rice with a fork.

  2. In a bowl, mix the mashed rice with the beaten egg, flour, salt, and cayenne pepper until smooth.

Shape and serve

  1. Form the mixture into small balls, about the size of a marble.

  2. Drop the rice balls into the soup just before serving.

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

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

  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 + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rice + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,350 recipes

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

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

Cold boiled rice
Forms the bulk of each ball and holds its shape once mashed and bound.
Whole egg
Binds the mashed rice together so the balls hold their shape as they cook.
Flour
Absorbs moisture and helps firm the mixture so it can be shaped into balls.

The step that matters

Dropping the rice balls into the soup just before serving. The egg sets only when heated, and the balls can soften and break apart if left too long in hot liquid. Adding them at the last moment keeps their shape and texture.

“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.

More rice balls recipes

Cheese 5Fried 5 See all 25 →

You might also like

Rice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesRice Griddle CakesRice Griddle Cakes28 recipesRice and Cheese CasseroleRice and Cheese Casserole23 recipes