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Dessert

Rice Fritters

A sweet fried rice batter with lemon, cinnamon, milk, and eggs, served with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Rice Fritters

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 Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Wash, drain, and dry the rice.

Make the mixture

  1. In a saucepan, combine the rice, sugar, lemon rind, cinnamon, and milk. Boil while stirring frequently for 45 minutes.

  2. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  3. Beat the egg yolks separately, then add to the rice mixture and beat for 10 minutes.

  4. Beat the egg whites separately and fold them into the mixture, beating for an additional 5 minutes.

Fry and serve

  1. In a small omelet pan, heat the butter and fry spoonfuls of the mixture until golden on both sides.

  2. Drain the fritters and sift fine loaf sugar over them before serving on a neatly folded napkin.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the body of the fritters, thickening the milk into a soft, sieved mixture.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and set the mixture, while whipped whites add lightness to the batter.
Milk
Cooks with the rice into a creamy base that gives the fritters moisture.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and helps the fritters brown when fried.
Butter
Fries the fritters in a golden, richly flavored coating.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites hold air only if they are beaten separately and folded in gently; overmixing knocks out that air and leaves the fritters dense.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

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