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Dessert

Croquettes of Rice

Rice cooked in milk, shaped into balls, coated in egg and bread crumbs, fried and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Croquettes of Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Combine the rice and milk in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer until the rice is tender.

  3. Rub the lemon rind with the sugar.

  4. Add the sugar and lemon mixture to the rice along with the beaten egg yolks.

  5. Stir until the mixture thickens.

  6. Allow the mixture to cool.

Shape and coat

  1. Form the mixture into small balls.

  2. Whisk the eggs in a bowl.

  3. Dip each ball into the egg.

  4. Coat each ball with bread crumbs.

  5. Smooth the balls with a knife.

  6. Repeat the egg and crumb coating.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a frying pan.

  2. Fry the balls lightly until golden.

  3. Drain the croquettes from the fat.

  4. Place the croquettes on a dish.

  5. Sift powdered sugar over the croquettes.

  6. 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  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
Starch that thickens with the milk and gives the croquettes their body.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess to the rice mixture as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the lemon.
Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the mixture, and the whole egg helps the crumbs adhere.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp coating that browns when fried.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before forming the balls. As the starch-thickened mixture cools it firms up and holds its shape. Shaping it while still hot and soft makes the balls slump and crack, and the coating slides off.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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