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Rice Dodgers

Rice Dodgers are fried rice balls made with boiled rice, egg, sugar, flour, bread, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,259 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Rice Dodgers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Boil the rice in salted water until soft, then let it cool.

  2. Add the egg, sugar, and self-rising flour to the cooled rice.

  3. Soak the slice of bread in water, drain it, and remove the crust.

  4. Mix the soaked bread well with the rice mixture.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into boiling lard or coconut, ensuring they do not touch the bottom of the pot.

  2. Serve with hot coffee.

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 + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Rice
Forms the bulk of the dumplings, giving a soft, chewy base once cooked and cooled.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the dumplings hold together while frying.
Self-rising flour
Adds starch and built-in leavening so the dumplings puff slightly as they cook.
Bread
Soaked bread adds moisture and softness to the mixture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the dumplings.
Lard
Frying fat that cooks the dumplings and gives a golden surface.

The step that matters

Keep the spoonfuls off the bottom of the pot. Dumplings resting on the hot base can stick and scorch before they set. Giving each spoonful room in the hot fat lets it cook evenly on all sides.

“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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