Name: Cheese and Rice Croquettes
Ingredients: 1 cup shredded pimento cheese; ½ cup butter or substitute; 2 cups cold boiled rice; ¼ cup flour; 1 cup milk; coarse sea salt to taste; bread crumbs; 1 beaten egg

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 ↓

Cheese and Rice Croquettes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese sauce

Make a thick white sauce by melting butter, adding flour, and gradually stirring in milk. Cook until thickened.
Add shredded cheese to the sauce and stir until melted.
Season with salt to taste.

Shape and coat

Let the mixture cool, then combine it with the cold rice and shape into croquettes.
Roll each croquette in bread crumbs, dip in beaten egg, and roll in crumbs again.

Fry

Fry the croquettes in deep oil 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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,130 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pimento cheese: Melts into the sauce to give the croquettes their rich, savoury cheese flavour.
Butter: Provides fat that enriches the sauce and helps it stay smooth.
Cold boiled rice: Forms the bulk of the croquette, giving body and a soft interior texture.
Flour: Thickens the milk and butter into a white sauce that holds the mixture together.
Milk: Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a creamy texture.
Beaten egg: Binds the breading so the crumbs adhere and form a crisp coating.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool fully before shaping. A warm sauce is soft and sticky, so the croquettes may slump or split. Chilling firms the starch and fat so they hold their shape through breading and frying.

“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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Cheese and Rice Croquettes