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Rice Croquettes

Fried rolls of cooked rice mixed with milk, butter, sugar, eggs, and lemon, coated in cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Rice Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. Wash the rice well and boil it in milk and water until tender but dry.

  2. While hot, add butter, sugar, eggs, lemon juice, and lemon peel; stir well.

  3. Shape the mixture into rolls about 3 inches long and 2 inches wide.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each roll into beaten eggs, then coat with cracker crumbs.

  2. Fry in hot lard until golden brown.

  3. 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Starch that softens in milk and water, then sets into a firm, sliceable body when cooled and shaped.
Eggs
Bind the cooked rice and help the coated rolls hold together during frying.
Butter
Adds richness and a soft, tender mouthfeel to the rice mixture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the exterior brown during frying.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust that contrasts with the soft interior.
Lemon
Its juice and peel add acidity and aroma that brighten the sweet rice mixture.

The step that matters

Cook the rice until tender but dry. Rice that stays wet will make the rolls soft and prone to falling apart when coated and fried. Cooking off excess liquid gives the mixture enough body to hold its shape.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, egg, butter, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, egg, butter, sugar. 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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