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Rice Puffs

Rice puffs are fried batter cakes made with eggs, cooked rice, butter, sour milk, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Rice Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs separately until very light, reserving the egg whites to add just before frying.

  2. In a bowl, combine the cooked rice, butter, sour milk, baking soda, and flour.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Fry and drain

  1. Heat lard in a deep pan until boiling.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot lard and fry until golden brown.

  3. Remove the puffs and place them on a napkin to drain, keeping them covered to stay warm.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Beaten whites trap air that lifts the puffs and gives them a light, airy texture.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda, releasing gas that helps the puffs rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that leavens the batter.
Cooked rice
Adds body and a tender, slightly chewy texture to the batter.
Flour
Provides structure so the batter holds its shape while frying.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb inside the puffs.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. The whites hold air that makes the puffs light. Vigorous stirring deflates them, so the puffs fry up dense instead of airy.

“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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