Skip to main content
Main

Rice Croquettes

Rice croquettes are fried cylinders made from boiled rice, milk, butter, sugar, cinnamon, salt, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Rice Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice mixture

  1. Heat the milk with the butter and sugar in a saucepan until boiling.

  2. Add the boiled rice, cinnamon or nutmeg, and salt.

  3. Mix well and bring to a boil.

  4. Stir in the beaten egg.

  5. Remove from heat.

  6. Transfer the mixture to a plate.

  7. Let it cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the cooled mixture into cylinders.

  2. Fry the cylinders in hot butter 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. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Boiled rice
Forms the bulk of the croquette and, once cooled and bound, holds the shape.
Milk
Cooks the rice into a soft, moist mixture that binds the croquettes.
Beaten egg
Sets when heated, binding the rice mixture so it holds its cylinder shape.
Butter
Adds richness and, when frying, promotes golden browning on the outside.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the exterior brown when fried.

The step that matters

Let it cool before shaping. The egg sets as the mixture heats, and the starch in the rice firms as it cools. Shaping while the mixture is still hot and soft makes the cylinders slump or tear, so they need to cool fully before forming.

“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

You might also like