Skip to main content
Main

Rice Croquettes, No. 1

Rice croquettes made from soaked rice, milk, sugar, eggs, lemon peel, butter, and salt, coated in cracker crumbs and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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, No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Soak the rice in warm water for 3 hours.

  2. Drain the rice, leaving it almost dry.

  3. Add the milk to the rice.

  4. Stir the mixture in a saucepan over boiling water until the rice is very tender.

Make the custard

  1. Stir in the sugar, butter, and salt.

  2. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Beat the eggs until frothy.

  4. Stir the beaten eggs into the rice mixture off the heat.

  5. Return the mixture to heat.

  6. Stir until thickened, but do not let it boil.

  7. Remove the mixture from heat.

  8. Add the grated lemon peel.

  9. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered dish to cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Flour your hands.

  2. Roll the rice into oval balls.

  3. Dip each ball in beaten egg.

  4. Coat the balls with cracker crumbs.

  5. Fry in hot lard 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. 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 and thickens into the body of the croquette.
Milk
Liquid that cooks into the rice, giving a creamy, tender mixture.
Eggs
Set when heated, binding the mixture and forming a coating for the crumbs.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the mixture brown when fried.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the texture of the mixture.

The step that matters

Stir until thickened, but do not let it boil. Egg proteins added to the hot mixture can curdle or scramble if it boils, leaving lumps instead of a smooth, binding custard.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More rice croquettes recipes

with Jelly 5Sweet 4 See all 315 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesRice Griddle CakesRice Griddle Cakes28 recipes