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Rice Fritters

A fried dish made from leftover rice mixed with eggs and lemon rind, served with fruit sauce and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Rice Fritters

Why it works: Rice and lettuce work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 520 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Rice Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the left-over rice with the beaten eggs and grated lemon rind.

Cook

  1. Grease a hot griddle with butter or oil.

  2. Pour the rice mixture onto the griddle and cook until golden brown on both sides.

Serve

  1. Serve with fruit sauce and lettuce.

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 + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together520 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Left-over rice
Forms the bulk of the fritter and gives it a firm, sliceable body.
Eggs
Bind the rice together and set when heated, holding the fritter in shape.
Grated lemon rind
Adds bright, aromatic citrus flavour to the rice mixture.

The step that matters

Cooking both sides until golden brown. The griddle must be hot enough to brown the surface quickly. If it is too cool, the fritter absorbs grease and cooks through slowly before it sets. Browning also adds flavour through the Maillard reaction.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, egg, lemon, butter, sauce):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, egg, lemon, butter, sauce. 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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