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Croquettes of Rice

A fried snack made from ground rice, flour, butter, and sugar, shaped into balls with apricot jam filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Croquettes of Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Shape the croquettes

  1. Boil sugar, bitter almonds, and lemon rind together until well combined and cold.

  2. Form the mixture into balls and make a small indentation in the center.

  3. Fill the indentation with apricot jam.

Coat and fry

  1. Roll each ball in beaten egg.

  2. Coat with ground rice and flour mixture.

  3. Fry 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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + apricottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Almond + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Forms the crisp, sandy coating around the outside of each ball.
Egg
Acts as a binder so the ground rice and flour coating sticks evenly.
Flour
Mixes with the ground rice to give the coating structure and help it brown.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the inner mixture and helps the surface brown when fried.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the coating fry to a golden colour.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown. Sugar and starch brown quickly through caramelization and the Maillard reaction. If the oil is too hot, the outside darkens before the filling warms through, so the frying heat should be moderate.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, almond, lemon, egg, rice, flour, 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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